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Researchers and policy makers in agriculture, food security and nutrition share a common need for accurate and timely information on the what, when, where, and why people eat and what they eat, of course, this is particularly true in low and middle income countries where the data infrastructure is less well developed to put this challenge in perspective in 2015, the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition reported that, and I quote "more than half of the countries in the world do not collect the statistics, which are needed to assess whether or not they are making progress toward their nutrition goals." So today we're talking with two researchers who are working to solve this very data challenge.   Our guests are food policy and applied nutrition researcher, Jennifer Coates, Associate Professor at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition, Science, and Policy and senior researcher Winnie Bell. Jennifer and Winnie are leading development of the International Dietary Data Expansion Project   Interview Summary   Jennifer, let's start with you. Your research focus at Tufts is on the development of methods for improving the design implementation and evaluation of international nutrition and food security programs. And I know in particular, in the context of development in humanitarian emergencies. Could you help our listeners understand the issue of this INDDEX Project that you're working on?   Jennifer - Just to give a little bit of history. The international community has probably over the past five or so years really begun to embrace the need to think about nutrition's role at the nexus of agriculture and the environment and health. So not just a standalone sector, but rather a culmination of whole bunch of different forces within the broader food system that in combination have this remarkable impact on people's food choices and ultimately their diets. So we also know that in turn, the food choices really drive health outcomes and in a very systemic fashion affect agriculture, the environment, food security, poverty, and so on. So the problem though, for those who are interested in the interplay of these forces in much of the world, is that we know shockingly little about what people eat and we're not able to easily distinguish the dietary patterns of adult men, for instance, from school age girls or from those living in one region of the country to another. And this information gap has really hindered policies in all of the different sectors that I mentioned and others, because policy makers are often driving blind without having more frequent and more granular dietary information. This data gap is particularly a challenge across low and middle income countries.   So let me follow up on this. It seems like this information is pretty darn important because it could drive nutrition guidelines for countries that could drive bio-fortification programs. They could certainly have an impact on agriculture policies.   Jennifer - There are a number of different reasons, in fact, for one thing, we're globally really lacking a kind of cohesive dietary data infrastructure, I will say, and this is made up of several different missing pieces of information. So we lack the kind of information that can help us actually carry out dietary surveys. So information on what are the most commonly consumed foods across many of the countries where people live and also what are the nutrient composition of that food in the US for instance, we have a very rich repository of data on the foods consumed by people all over this country, including many, many different kinds of processed foods. And we also have information on the nutrient content of those foods. And so it makes it very easy to take that information and go out and conduct a survey on what people are consuming, but we don't have that kind of information for most low and middle income countries. And another reason is that partly because we lack this dietary infrastructure, people have over time, come to view dietary data as being very challenging to collect and have shied away from it because of that. So now we're reaching a point, I would say, where we're seeing a groundswell of recognition for the need for dietary data and then that is driving a lot of efforts, not just our project, but other related projects that are really trying to begin to close this gap.   I appreciate that hopeful note. So Winnie, you're leading key aspects of the second phase of this project, which is the rollout of the INDDEX24 dietary assessment platform. Could you describe the platform in more detail and why you believe it is needed.   Winnie - The INDDEX project, the International Dietary Data Expansion Project has been around for about six years. We started in 2015 with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and our main objective has been to increase the availability access and use of dietary data in low and middle income countries. The platform is designed to address some of these underlying challenges that Jenny just spoke about.   INDDEX was conceived to begin to address the lack of dietary infrastructure for collecting individual level quantitative dietary data. One part is the Global Food Matters Database where we house and fold all of the dietary reference data that are required for individual level food consumption surveys. So that includes food composition information, standard recipes, necessary conversion factors, and the probes that are used during the interview process. So that's the first kind of big component of the INDDEX24 platform.   The next piece is the INDDEX24 mobile app, which is actually what's used in the field to collect the dietary data during the survey, both of these pieces are connected through a survey management hub where the data can be monitored in real time during data collection, as well as used for easing the processing and analysis of the 24-hour recall data on the backend. So the 24-hour dietary recall method is commonly used to collect detailed quantitative information on what individuals consume. Individuals are asked to recall everything that they consumed in the past 24 hours followed by a more detailed information on each of the food items, getting into that type of food consumed and the brand, for example, the third step is to then collect the quantity of each food consumed and then finally reviewing that information with the respondent.   All this might sound a bit abstract, so I would encourage listeners to check out our website for a full visual and a demo of the different aspects of the platform and in terms of why it's needed. And this, as Jenny highlighted, we have this critical gap in information and this platform has been designed to increase a collection of 24 hour dietary recall data in low and middle-income countries.   This could be enormously powerful to have this tool available and it's really nice that you're doing it around the world with a special emphasis on countries where the data are most lacking. So Jennifer, let me go back to you in your opinion, how has the international nutrition and dietary assessment landscape changed over the, say the past decade and looking into your crystal ball, how do you think it will change?   Jennifer - I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons there has traditionally been so little dietary data available is that it was often written off as being too expensive, too time consuming and too difficult to collect. So traditional dietary assessment methods, such as those that rely on respondent recall can also produce inaccurate results, which people recognize and were discouraged by this narrative. This ridiculous challenge of dietary data assessment really became a mantra, it became almost paralyzing I'd say, one of the biggest changes that I've noticed over the past five to seven years is an acceleration on so many fronts. There's been an acceleration in terms of the demand for dietary data, absolutely. And then in response, but also out there leading, I'd say those involved in generating dietary data have developed a new can-do attitude, a real rolling up the sleeves and just getting it done.   Partly this has been catalyzed by very generous funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, not just of our project, but of other similar projects with INDDEX24 we're trying to make dietary data, I guess, increasingly available. We're hoping that it will be collected more frequently and therefore be used by policy makers more often, but there are also other aspects of the dietary data value chain that other projects are addressing. For instance, the WHO/FAO GIFT Project has been working to make dietary data more readily accessible in a centralized repository and much more usable by policymakers, through simple visualizations that communicate very readily to those who aren't up to their eyeballs and dietary data, and might not know otherwise how to interpret it. So this kind of information has improved on the way that people both access and use dietary data.   And then looking forward, one of the things that we're seeing are a huge number of efforts going on to develop innovative technology. Much of it is still nascent, not quite ready for prime time, but to improve the possibility of capturing information on diets in real time, like while people are eating, researchers are using imaging approaches coupled with artificial intelligence in order to upend the traditional field of dietary assessment. So, no, we're not there yet, we've already made leaps and bounds on this front, over the last, over the past 10 years and I think that 10 years from now this whole challenge will look completely different, in fact, I think we will probably have done away with many of the things that we now find to be very difficult about dietary assessment.   What you just mentioned about technology being used to more accurately assess what people are consuming sound very promising. And I remember back when I was first paying attention to work in this area, and there were a lot of concerns about the accuracy of things. Researchers were reporting that people may not be able to accurately judge portion sizes. They may intentionally under or over report consuming such things. And there was talk in those early years about having other information available where you could correct for things to actually establish a more realistic number. So say people underestimate by an average of X %, then you could correct for that, are people doing that at all? Or will this technology help with that issue?   Jennifer - There's work going on for both of those fronts, so you're absolutely right, that those types of corrections are possible and are actually very useful. One of the things that is very challenging right now in our efforts in low and middle income countries is that we don't actually have enough information yet to really be able to establish appropriate correction factors. One of the reasons for that is that, for instance, in the US people most commonly under report, what they've consumed the previous day and that's partly because they forget, and it might also be because they think it might be more socially acceptable to under-report. But we really don't know all that much about how people from various cultures report their diets, when they're trying to recall, there is documented under-reporting.   There's also documented over-reporting and there's a lot of variability establishing the correction factor is a whole other level of work that would be very helpful and remains to be done. One of the benefits of the imaging technology is that you're not relying on people's memories. And in fact, the camera is present, even though that sounds a little creepy, big brother watching everything that you're eating, but the camera is present and often in an unobtrusive way, as people are eating their meals. And so of course you might be concerned about people modifying their behavior, if they're aware of a camera recording, what it is that they're eating, but at the same time, some of this research has suggested that having the camera be situated in a very, very small way on, the special glasses that people be asked to wear or as a button that they wear on their shirt, for instance, has really helped reduce some of that kind of potential bias too. So there's a lot of promise from the imaging and there are still challenges to be worked out for instance, how to take the images that the camera's capturing and in a very automated way, convert that into something that can be recognized as food, especially in complex dishes, like stew with lots of different kinds of ingredients. So that's kind of the excitement, but also the challenge of this new frontier.     That's really interesting. So let me close by asking you both this question moving forward, what do you see as the biggest challenges as well as the opportunities for increasing collection and use of dietary data in low and middle income countries? And Winnie let's begin with you.   Winnie - So, as we've both mentioned, the dietary data infrastructure has been historically one of the largest barriers to successful completion of dietary surveys in low middle-income countries. The INDDEX Project has been focused on trying to build up this research infrastructure over the last six years of our project. But the challenge remains is it an enormous undertaking that really will require political will from a variety of key players and champions from both governments as well as on the donor and investment side, as well as on the research end of things. We're absolutely moving in the right direction, but I think the challenge remains, how do we develop this robust and necessary dietary data infrastructure to ensure that we can collect more easily and use more frequently the dietary data from low middle-income countries.   We have successful examples of this being developed where political will has converged. So in the health sector, for example, we've seen huge movement over the last several decades to creating health systems in low middle-income countries. So we're hoping that the momentum continues to grow, to overcome this challenge in relation to nutrition. And as far as opportunities, I think there are several, but a very concrete one is on the technology side of things as Jenny mentioned with artificial intelligence and other efforts. And I think the other overall opportunity is general growing awareness of the importance of dietary data. Everybody is interested, everybody wants to see the results, and historically people are happy to have the data available, but few people have been willing to put in the effort to invest and collect those data.   Thank you, Winnie. So Jennifer, what are your thoughts on this issue?   Jennifer - I'd say that with dietary assessment in low and middle income countries, having historically been such a neglected area relative to say the many advances that we've seen in terms of information systems in the health sector, there has also been a lack of opportunity for very vibrant knowledge exchange. There are countries that have developed a lot of expertise and a lot of capacity in the area of dietary assessment and yet the kind of infrastructure that would enable country to country learning as well as training and mentoring between those who have already amassed a deal of experience in dietary data assessment, and those who are trying to improve their skills in this area has really been lacking. I'd say that the flip side opportunity to that challenge would be to scale up a global community of practice that can serve as a platform for exchange, for training, for learning and for maintaining this positive momentum that we've seen over the last five years. So we need to be thinking about the next generation and equipping them with the tools and the skills and the capacity to be able to carry this forward.   Bios:   Dr. Jennifer Coates is the Principal Investigator of the INDDEX Project and is an Associate Professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and a Senior Researcher at the Tufts Feinstein International Center. Dr. Coates' research focuses on the development of methods and metrics for improving the design, implementation, and evaluation of international nutrition and food security programs in both development and humanitarian emergency contexts. In addition to her research and policy engagement, Dr. Coates teaches a range of graduate courses at the Friedman School.     Winnie Bell is a Senior Researcher with the INDDEX Project. Winnie was responsible for leading the INDDEX24 research activities in Viet Nam, including conducting the feasibility and validation studies. In addition, she is providing technical expertise and managing the development of the INDDEX Project's Data4Diets Platform. Prior to joining the INDDEX Project, Winnie had worked for over five years as food security analyst and researcher with the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Food Security Information Network (FAO/IFPRI/WFP), and Tufts University. Winnie is currently a PhD candidate at Tufts University, where she also earned an MS in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition and an MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics.       

Sometimes all you need to revamp your real estate strategy is to discover the tactics of others. On today's episode of The Real Estate Sales Podcast, Jimmy is joined by Jennifer Murtland, real estate agent at eXp Realty and co-host of the Real Estate Fight Club Podcast, to learn the secret to listing success. Be successful when knocking on doors. Jennifer's favorite part of sales has always been cold calling and knocking on people's doors. But how does she do it successfully? Well, Jennifer looks like a suburban mom. Ipso facto, she can knock on doors just about anywhere and nobody bats an eye.  When you approach a home, simply say you're a realtor, explain why you're there and ask what you need. More people will answer the door for a female than a man. Jennifer's tips for a male: Wear khakis and a polo, and carry a gift bag to store your flyers. What to do when the conversation starts: The ultimate success is gaining their contact information. So if someone is interested in the conversation, just simply ask for the best way to contact them.  Don't be passive. Instead, ask for what you want, and people will usually give it to you.  If Jennifer realizes someone has a  motivation to talk with her, she'll set the next step. Don't push for information from someone who doesn't want to talk or hear from you. Jennifer's Mainstays for Lead Generation: There are many shiny objects in real estate, and there are many ways to be successful. Jennifer's tip is to find two ways that work for you. For example, Jennifer values time efficiency. The most time-efficient way to generate leads is cold calling. Ergo, Jennifer likes cold calling. In this market, you can't wait for things to come on the market. So Jennifer uses tactics like circle prospecting and door-knocking to find houses before they're listed. Strengths and Weaknesses of Realtors Today: Math is many realtors' biggest weakness. But when you deal with a client's largest asset (AKA their home), they need and deserve an agent with math skills The biggest asset? Ability to communicate what's happening in the marketplace for their community. To know that, you need to ask questions. Use platforms that give good results. Jennifer recommends the lead generation platform Vulcan7. For Jennifer's coupon code for this platform, click here. If you want to contact Jennifer, give her a call or text at (513) 400-1691 and tune in to her podcast, The Real Estate Fight Club. Connect with Jimmy Burgess on LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as his YouTube channel.   If you like what you heard today, we'd love it if you'd share a rating or review and then subscribe to the podcast and tell others about it as well. You can find The Real Estate Sales Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible, and our website, The Real Estate Sales Podcast. with Jimmy Burgess on LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as his YouTube channel.   If you like what you heard today, we'd love it if you'd share a rating or review and then subscribe to the podcast and tell others about it as well. You can find The Real Estate Sales Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible, and our website, The Real Estate Sales Podcast.

With the holidays quickly approaching we are told we should be grateful for the things in our life. And well this year that may be more difficult. So Jennifer and Jigna had a conversation with Zesa Wellness founders, Maitri Vaidya and Ashley Hardcastle Alopra, to learn how to find Gratitude during this time of uncertainty. #laidofflife​ #whenlifegivesyoulemons​ #zesawellness​ #gratitudeEnjoyed this episode? You can see all of season one by visiting laidofflife.co ​Intro and closing music, Just Like That, has been licensed peruse through Melody Loops. License # 913891116 Fair Use: This podcast may use copyrighted material, which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The application of the material constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. The following work is intended to be free, shared, and for informational and entertainment purposes. We are not affiliated with nor aim to promote any product, service, or show mentioned on any of our web sites, by Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, we want to share material offered publicly and without profit to the users of the internet for comment and nonprofit educational, informational purposes.

Good Morning it's Thursday February 18th, and this is The Wenatchee World's podcast, Slices of Wenatchee. We're excited to bring you a closer look at one of our top stories and other announcements every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  Today --- As Gov. Jay Inslee announces relaxed restrictions, restaurant owners give a sigh of relief. Today's episode is brought to you by Equilus Group Incorporated. Equilus Group, Inc is a Registered Investment Advisory Firm in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Equilus Group, Inc- Building Your Financial Success. Learn more at Equilusfinancial.com. Member SIPC and FINRA. Restaurant owners give a sigh of relief with the return of indoor dining. They can finally begin the process of slowly recovering after months of closed doors. Gov. Jay Inslee announced relaxed COVID-19 rules for much of the state last Thursday.  Inslee has also acknowledged that closures have been difficult, but that efforts have paid off.  And now, restaurant owners in Wenatchee and around the state are excited to be open.  Edwin Fonseca, is co-owner at La Tortuga Loca in Wenatchee. He told us that he feels like people are eager to go out and have the dining experience again -- which for them, is a good thing. Because of the restaurant's small size and ease of transporting food — tacos, tortas, enchiladas, and more — reopening under the governor's Phase 2 rules is fairly simple..  Fonseca and his father also took pay cuts so they would not have to lay off employees when indoor dining was shut down, so they are in no rush to find employees now that things have opened back up. Fonseca said he was optimistic about their chances and grateful to the community for their support. But Alma's Kitchen cannot afford to bring back more employees -- even  while at 25% indoor capacity. Marco Ramirez, the son of co-owner Alma Ramirex said they were scrambling to get ready. According to Ramirez the last shutdown hit Alma's Kitchen during the worst possible time. They were  down to the last dollar when the third round of PPP loans came through. Though they're thankful, he said it seems like we're always pushing it to the extreme. And unlike La Tortuga Loca, takeout is not feasible for them. Alma's Kitchen hopes to be back at 100% indoor dining in March, but for now, anything is better than nothing. Ramirez also said that surviving each shutdown has left Alma's Kitchen with huge debt from the Paycheck Protection Program -- the program that was originally a lifeline for them.  And with the prospect of returning back to Phase 1 -- takeout only -- well Alma's Kitchen will do all it can to remain open, but without additional help it would be impossible. Juan Murriz Arroyo, the owner of El Rey Azteca in East Wenatchee said that the move to Phase 2 is bittersweet. While it means that COVID-19 cases are going down, for him it's also a reminder of how much he would like to see things go back to normal. Before Inslee's announcement on Thursday, El Rey Azteca was looking at one more month before they would have to close. Arroyo said he's happy with 25% and will continue to adapt to the situation but much like Ramirez, he remains worried about returning to Phase 1. Finally, we spoke with Craig Still, the owner of Garlini's Napoletana in Wenatchee. Still said he is thrilled about the move to 25% indoor dining. Garlini's had been working with the “open air” protocols that were allowing customers to dine inside as long as people were spaced six feet apart, and windows and doors were kept open. But with the transition to Phase 2, he no longer has to do that. Thanks to a takeout program and their customers, Garlini's was able to survive, and moving back to Phase 2 has infused some energy into the staff. Next, For Valentine's Day, local residents shared their memories of love. Today we're excited to share a few. Jennifer Thacker found her picture-perfect ending at Liberty Theatre in 1991. The East Wenatchee resident was 20 at the time. She was working as a box office attendant at the Wenatchee movie theater when she met her husband Sam. Sam worked at the local Domino's, and his co-worker was dating Jennifer's co-worker. Sam tried to get the co-worker to give him Jennifer's number, but was too shy to ask in person. So Jennifer ultimately took matters into her own hands. She went into Domino's and asked him out. For their first date, Jennifer got free tickets from the theater to see the newly-released Blake Edwards film “Switch”. A year later Jennifer and Sam were married at Lincoln Rock State Park, and they have remained together since. The Thackers were just one of 30 Wenatchee Valley residents to share her memorable location of love for The Wenatchee World's first Locations of Love map.  Here are some other highlights: Bob H. found his high-school sweetheart at Cashmere High School: They met in high school and got married on prom day -- It was cheaper to rent the tux once than have to rent it twice. They've been married almost 30 years. Victoria V. gave birth to their love at Central Washington Hospital: Victoria's first Love Location was at the Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee, where she gave birth to her daughter Payton-Olivia. And a few of our readers celebrated love at Mission Ridge: Brian H had one of his first dates with his now wife at Mission Ridge Ski & Board Resort. She had never skied before and he wanted to teach her how. Time went by and he ended up popping the question in that same location. They've been married for four years now and still go skiing all the time. Melanie R said she and her husband both grew up in the Wenatchee Valley but met after high school. They love the outdoors. They set their wedding date for August 8th of 1998 at Mission Ridge. They've been married now for 22 years and still live in the valley.  And finally, Anne and Rod H. were sitting on the top of a rock at graffiti corner on Mission Ridge Road after a good day of skiing --- they drank a beer, looked out at the valley, and were thankful for the good life they've had. To check out more of these stories view the full map online at wenatcheeworld.com/locationsoflove.  Clare Barron is a playwright and actor from Wenatchee. In 2015 she won the Obie Award for Playwriting for You Got Older. She was also a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dance Nation. Barron became interested in theatre in her early teens. She was in a Shakespeare troupe for children Wenatchee, which was run by the playwright Heidi Schreck's mother, Sherry Schreck. Barron went on to attended the Tisch Summer Program while in high school, and then Yale University. Thanks for listening. Today's episode is brought to you by Equilus Group, Inc- Building Your Financial Success. Learn more at Equilusfinancial.com. The Wenatchee World has been engaging, informing and inspiring North Central Washington Communities since 1905. We encourage you to subscribe today to keep your heart and mind connected to what matters most in North Central Washington. Thank you for starting your morning with us and don't forget to tune in again on Saturday! Support the show: https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/site/forms/subscription_services/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the food industry promises to police itself and pledges to improve nutrition in public health, can it be trusted to make meaningful change or must government mandate those changes? Our two guests today have done groundbreaking work to help address this very question. Dr. Jessica Fanzo, Professor of Global Food and Agricultural Policy and Ethics at Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Jennifer Harris is Senior Research Advisor for Marketing Initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. Interview Summary So Jess, let's begin with you. You coauthored what I thought was a very important and novel report released by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition on product reformulation by the food industry. Would you might explain what's meant by reformulation? When we think about reformulation, it's really defined as the process of all-terrain a food or a beverage product. You can alter that by improving the products' health profile or reducing the content of harmful nutrients or ingredients. So it's a process of either removing those negative ingredients or nutrients or adding back positive ones into foods. Why is that done? Because people consume a lot of processed foods. Almost every food that we consume has gone through some form of processing, but there's a whole range of that processing from very minimal to very highly processed, what's often called ultra-processed or junk food that doesn't have a lot of nutritional value. In the report, we were looking at what are the challenges with reformulating food? What are some of the opportunities to reformulate food? And in the realm of reformulation, has it had a positive impact on public health? So we were looking at those aspects of the reformulation of processed foods. So I'm assuming there could be enormous advances to public health if reformulation were done on a broad scale and or if it were done in a meaningful way. So what were your main findings then? Have there been examples of industry being successful with voluntary reformulation? Somewhat. And absolutely it could have potentially really important positive impacts for public health, but it's also not a panacea for improving diets and nutrition. And while there are some examples where voluntary reformulation has had some impact, the UK with salt and some other examples, overall we found that it's important for governments to mandate reformulation through different tools, whether it's labeling, taxes, et cetera. For foods that are not reformulated, we felt that it was really important for governments to mandate with clear, transparent and direct targets, particularly removing the unhealthy ingredients like added sugars, salts, unhealthy fats like trans fats. The food industry should be involved in implementing reformulation policies but not in their design. And governments need to really step in and step up. But that said, that doesn't mean that reformulation is going to solve all the problems. Governments also need to invest in many other tools to protect consumers and to invest in other ways to improve diets for nutrition. So reformulation shouldn't be the only answer. So I'm assuming the reason that food industry won't go far enough on their own is that these things that make the food less healthy also tend to make them pretty palatable, or give them long shelf life or properties that make people enjoy them a lot. And that why in the world would they do something that would make their products less desirable? Does that pretty much the case or do you see other reasons why? That's definitely true. I mean, these highly processed foods are cheap in their ingredients to make, they are very palatable, there's a high demand for them. We're seeing this shift now into low-income countries like with tobacco when consumers catch on that these foods are not so healthy, they go to populations where there's a bit of a lag in that knowledge. But also reformulating foods from the industry's perspective is not so easy. It's quite expensive to do it. It's difficult to reduce salt and sugar, which are vital not only for the taste of foods, but for their composition and shelf-life and texture. So it has a lot of ramifications to remove those ingredients. So meeting government mandates around reformulation can be really challenging and sometimes impossible for companies. So they often will deal with getting a warning label, for the example in Chile, they'll just take the warning label because they can't reformulate some foods. But there's a change in consumer demand and tastes. Consumers like their brands, but the more and more consumers are caring about clean labels, environmental sustainability, their health, people are concerned about the amount of sugar in foods so they're going to have to answer to that, that changing demand as consumers demand better foods whether it's from a health or sustainability or transparency perspective. Let me ask one more question related to this. Is it also the case that it's pretty difficult for some company to be the first out of the gate if they were inclined to do this voluntarily because then their products would become less desirable and their competitors would be kinda stuck in the old ways? So isn't that another argument for government intervening that everybody is on the same playing field? Absolutely, yes. I mean, why not hold every player accountable and to the same standards and mandates? It pushes them all to take action. So when we were interviewing some of the industry players, they really struggle because when they did try to reformulate some of the foods, consumers no longer bought them because they're very wedded to their brands, they're wedded to certain tastes, it's a real challenge for them to keep their consumer base. But at the same time, try to adhere to government mandate. And some companies care more about health and sustainability than others. We definitely learn that some companies have no interest in that, because they know they'll always be a big consumer base for these quote less healthy foods. So there's a real issue from company to company of who's willing to take more action to reformulate and who doesn't really care to reformulate at all and they're willing to live with warning stickers and taxes. So Jennifer, let's turn to you. So you've done really pioneering work on the impact of food marketing on children that began when we were colleagues together at the Rudd Center when it was at Yale University. And there I was witness to the fact that you created a very impressive methodology for studying what's a pretty complicated issue. And you paid a lot of attention to industry promises for self-policing of children's food marketing. Do you mind giving us a quick sense of what's being marketed to who and how, and how much marketing children are exposed to? Annually, companies spend over $13 billion in advertising food to all consumers. And just to put that number in perspective, the whole chronic disease prevention budget at the CDC is 1 billion. So the companies are really controlling the messages about what people should eat. And most of that money is spent to advertise very unhealthy products. The products that are contributing to poor diet and disease in this country. The biggest ones are fast food, sugary drinks, sweet and salty snacks and candy. Those categories represent about 80% of all foods that are advertised. Healthier categories of foods, if you look at all of juice, water, fruits, and vegetables and nuts combined, it's less than 3% of the total. So they're really pushing these very high fat, high sugar, high salt products extensively. Companies spend most of their advertising dollars on television ads. On an annual basis, kids see about 4,000 of those ads per year. So almost 4,000 ads, that's over 10 a day for unhealthy food. Kids of color, so black kids see twice as many of those ads. A lot of the worst products, their advertising is targeted to Black and Hispanic communities and especially adolescents. But TV isn't the only way companies advertise. And in the last few years, the ways that companies market just increased exponentially. Now with smartphones and tablets, they can reach kids any place and any time through things like ads on YouTube videos, social media, smartphone apps, with games and ordering programs, even educational websites teachers are using in grade school have ads on them. This kind of marketing is personalized. So what you see depends on what you do online. They know who you are and they can reach you. And unfortunately, this kind of marketing also is the kind of thing that parents can't monitor as easily as what your child is watching on TV. So the companies basically try to be wherever the consumer is to reach them with their advertising. Well those are really stunning numbers. I know one of the arguments the industry has made for years, and one of the things that you've addressed directly in your research is their claim that this food advertising doesn't really make kids or adults eat an unhealthy diet, it just shifts their preference from brand to brand. So if Coke is advertising a lot, they might say, "Well we just wanna take market share from Pepsi, "but we're not encouraging sugar beverage consumption." What would you say to that? That is something they've argued for a long time. And one thing that we showed is that just watching a television program with food advertising makes kids and adults eat a lot more both while they're watching and afterwards. And another of our colleagues, Ashley Gearhardt has done some really interesting research showing how the food advertising actually activates the reward regions of the brain and leads to increased consumption. So that's one way that food marketing affects more than brand preferences. There's also been a lot of research showing that if you advertise Coke, it increases consumption and purchases of all sugary drinks. They also affect sales of the categories, not just the specific brands. So with you and others doing so much work showing how much of the marketing there is and how disastrous the impact is, you can imagine the industry feels vulnerable to the possibility of outside regulation or perhaps even litigation. And so one of the things the industry has done and this links back to what Jessica was talking about in the context of reformulation, is to say that they can police themselves. So can you explain how they've gone about doing that? Well in the US there's a program called the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which is the food industry self-regulatory program to address food advertising to kids. And there are similar programs in countries around the world. But basically what the industry has promised is that they will only advertise products that meet nutrition standards in child directed media. That sounds really great. They implemented the program in 2007, but you said Kelly, we've done a lot of research showing how many limitations and loopholes there are in this program. One is that they only define children as 11 years and younger. So they only have promised to reduce unhealthy advertising to young children. And more and more of the research is showing that adolescents are just as affected and maybe even more effected by the advertising. Since their program was implemented, they've increased their advertising to the slightly older group that isn't covered by the CFBAI. Another limitation is their definition of what is child directed is advertising in media where children are the primary audience. So on television that would basically be children's TV. So Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, those kinds of programs. But children watch a lot more television than just children's television. And so they can still advertise anything they want on programs that are also watched by adults and older children. And then the third major limitation is that they've set their own nutrition standards. So they have defined what is healthy. And maybe not surprisingly, a lot of the products that they say are healthier choices that can be advertised to kids are things like sugary cereals, fruit drinks that maybe have less sugar but they also have artificial sweeteners in them. Things like goldfish crackers, fast-food kids' meals, all of those can still be advertised to children under their nutrition standards. What we found is since the program was implemented in 2007, food advertising on children's television has gone down quite a bit, 45%. But at the same time, advertising on other types of television that children watch has gone up about 30%. So now kids see almost as much food advertising as they used to, but most of it is not on children's television, it's on the other kinds of television that they're watching. And a lot of the harder things to monitor, things like apps and social media and websites do not qualify as child directed media under this program. Now the reason I asked both of you to be on this podcast at the same time as I figured there would be interesting similarities, even though you're working on somewhat different topics, and boy does it turn out to be they're real themes weave through this. So let's talk next about what might be done then. So Jessica, with your work on industry reformulation, what have you concluded can be done voluntarily? Kelly, I think government needs to be much more involved than they are. The challenges that we see with voluntary regulation, whether it's in reformulation or marketing of unhealthy foods to children, we know that voluntary reformulation, industry sets its own agenda, they set their own targets, they have no accountability to meet those targets, they may pledge to reduce harmful ingredients but if the product has a very high level of these unhealthy ingredients, the reformulation may not make much of a difference from a public health point of view. So I think we need much more regulation. Governments need to hold industry accountable and ensure that they are meeting national standards for public health. I think government has been too laissez-faire about industry and the power that they hold. And I think now we're seeing the consequences of that not only in the United States, but everywhere in the world with rising levels of obesity and NCDs and unhealthy diets being a big risk factor with these processed foods playing a huge role in that. So we really need to see government step up in a much more profound way and hold industry having public health goals. It's a little bit of enough is enough. So Jess, just out of curiosity, let's say you were the government official in charge of taking such action and you have the authority to do it, where would you start? Would you start with particular nutrients across the food chain or would you start with certain categories of food and would you worry first about sugar, salt, fat? That's a good question. In the paper we outline four types of processed foods. To me I would probably look across the entire food supply chain at those highly, highly processed foods. And it would be good to start with at least the three categories of sugars, salt, and trans fats to even start with and setting key targets for those and marking those ultra-processed foods that go beyond that target. Chile had the great food law that's been enacted that's put warning labels on the front of packages and has regulated I think some of the advertising of those foods. Jennifer you probably know about this. And I think that's been an important case study for the rest of the world to look at of how Chile has done that because sales of those foods that have the warning label have gone down somewhere in the ballpark of I think between 23 and 28%, depending on the population. But I think there's lessons to be learned of how Chile has done that that other governments could learn from. Now I'm happy that you pointed out the advances in Chile because there have been some very impressive impacts reported from the studies that have been done so far. So I agree that that is really a model to look to. So Jennifer, let's just get your opinion on this. Where do you come down on this issue of voluntary versus mandated? So we've given the industry 12 years now to show that they can market healthier products to kids. And basically what they've done is they're marketing slightly healthier products to kids but the products they're marketing are not nutritious products that children should be consuming a lot of like sugared cereals. So it's pretty clear that they can't do it on their own and that regulation is required. In the US, we have a little bit of an issue that not all countries have because of the First Amendment. And advertising is protected speech according to the Supreme Court. So we can't just say companies cannot advertise anything. So we have to be more strategic about the kinds of regulations that we can implement here. If we could do anything we wanted, Chile is a great example. In the next year, they won't be able to advertise any products that are high in fat, sugar and salt before 9:00 p.m. So it's not just children's programming, they won't be able to advertise it. They had to take all their characters off their packages. And so Tony the Tiger can't be on the package of frosted flakes anymore because it's high in sugar. They've done a lot of great things in Chile and sure we can adapt some of what they've done. In other countries also, for example the UK has very strong laws about marketing foods in digital media. So that would be another thing that we could import from other countries.   Bios   Jessica Fanzo, Ph.D., is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food Policy and Ethics at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Johns Hopkins University in the USA. She also serves as the Director of Hopkins' Global Food Policy and Ethics Program, and as Director of Food & Nutrition Security at the JHU Alliance for a Healthier World.  From 2017 to 2019, Jessica served as the Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report and the UN High Level Panel of Experts on Food Systems and Nutrition. Before coming to Hopkins, she has also held positions at Columbia University, the Earth Institute, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Food Programme, Bioversity International, and the Millennium Development Goal Centre at the World Agroforestry Center in Kenya. She was the first laureate of the Carasso Foundation's Sustainable Diets Prize in 2012 for her research on sustainable food and diets for long-term human health. Jennifer Harris, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Advisor, Marketing Initiatives at the Rudd Center. Previously, Dr. Harris worked as Director of Marketing Initiatives and was an Associate Professor in Allied Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Harris received her B.A. from Northwestern University and M.B.A. in Marketing from The Wharton School. Before returning to graduate school, she was a marketing executive for eighteen years, including at American Express as a Vice President in consumer marketing and as principal in a marketing strategy consulting firm. Harris completed her PhD in Social Psychology at Yale University with John Bargh and Kelly Brownell.

Our physical health and learning how to take care of our bodies have played a large role in our growth of the years. In the beginning of our marriage, we dealt with sexual issues and after 4 and a half years living with those problems we finally discovered what we believe was a major contributor to those problems. We began replacing our toxic products with non-toxic products and almost immediately found healing in the area of intimacy. We have had many people over the years ask what kinds of products we use now and so in this episode we share a little of our journey and the products we like to use. Pleas enjoy! PRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for our bodies. We pray we would be good stewards of our bodies and consider all that goes on them and in them. We pray we would be willing to take the time and research the items we use on a daily basis, using things that help us and not hurt us. Lord, we ask that you would give us wisdom as we navigate living a healthy lifestyle. Help us to make good choices and be on the same page in marriage so that we can enjoy the benefits of living toxic-free. Please help us not to be overwhelmed by the process of learning, but rather, help us to be humble and willing to learn so that we can choose what is healthy for us and be advocates of healthy living for the sake of others. We pray living healthy would not become an idol in our lives and would not hinder any of our relationships. May we be people who don't just consume, but who are about our bodies and take care of them.In Jesus’ name, Amen! Some things mention this episode. http://Parentingprayerchallenge.comhttps://shop.marriageaftergod.com/products/the-unveiled-wife-embracing-intimacy-with-god-and-your-husband-by-jennifer-smithhttps://ENG.orghttps://unveiledwife.com/oils/https://norwex.bizDr. Bronner’s - https://amzn.to/2vRCQ91https://www.bendsoap.com/Native Deodorant - https://amzn.to/2VXpWkzBert's Bees - https://amzn.to/3cPJkpNBurt's Bees 100% Natural Moisturizing Lipstick - https://amzn.to/3aKRNs7Ancient Minerals Magnesium Lotion - https://amzn.to/2TQu6YT READ TRANSCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helpin' you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today, we're gonna share with you our favorite non-toxic products. Welcome to the Marriage After God Podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as, Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as, Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage. Encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one. Full of life-- [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] and power, [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly, after God's will of our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Welcome back everyone to another episode of Marriage After God. We are happy to have ya, and today we are just going to share some, it's kinda like a funner episode, where we're gonna share, not just our non-toxic products, but why we choose those, and part of our story. [Aaron] Yeah, and well, we've had a lot of people over the years, kind of, 'cause we've talked about our journey with health, and we talk about products we use, and you have people often asking, "Well, what do you use?" [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And so-- [Jennifer] A large portion of my first book, "The Unveiled Wife," you know, talked about our journey, you know, figuring some stuff out, and so, we'll probably start there. [Aaron] Yeah, but it'll be fun. We believe that it's good to have a healthy life, I mean, everything we talk about it spiritual, but there's something to be said about, taking care of our bodies, and being careful with what we're putting on, being thoughtful, we even talk about, yeah, we talk about this often in our books, we talk about it in our life. We actually try and live it also, doesn't mean we're perfectly healthy in every aspect, but what's been awesome about it also is, we actually have less stuff, which is cool. So we'll talk about that a little bit too. So first, before we get into that, why don't you give a little update on baby Edith? [Jennifer] Yeah, is everyone as anxious as I am to meet her? I'm-- [Aaron] Some people are probably like, "They're having another baby?" [Jennifer] I know, [Aaron] Yes we are, number five. [Jennifer] Yep, I'm 38 weeks, and just starting to feel like way more ready and prepared, mentally, [Aaron] Some of that pre-labor stuff [Jennifer] Yep, and my body, but also, just in our home, I feel like, we are all kind of getting to that transition point where, I don't know, we're just, we're just ready. [Aaron] So I'll say this, if you don't hear of any more podcasts coming out, after this one, it's because we had the baby. [Jennifer] But, I haven't ever gone that early, so-- [Aaron] Yeah, you-- [Jennifer] I don't know. [Aaron] We're usually like, I should say, you're usually right on the dot. [Jennifer] I will say this, usually nesting kicks in, and I you know, look forward to, just utilizing that energy, that extra energy to clean the house, and get every nook and cranny, and this time I didn't get that way at all. I had to like, really rely on the Lord, and just um-- [Aaron] Well I'll say this, I think you did have the desire to nest, but you didn't have the energy this time. [Jennifer] Yeah, I had the desire for sure. [Aaron] You're like, "I just can't get up off the couch, "I just, I don't feel like I," So, there was all these things that you wanted to do, but it took a lot of my helping, it took a lot of like, extra stuff that you didn't have-- [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] and so, but that's just unique for this time. [Jennifer] But we got some stuff checked off our to-do list this weekend and now I feel ready. So thank you Aaron, thank you for your help with that. Yeah well, I'm sure we'll have a little bit more stuff before the baby comes. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Gettin' the house ready, just gettin' some things off of our plates, so that we can enjoy little baby Edith, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] when she's here. [Jennifer] What I did do, was I got through Olive's old clothes, and got like a drawer ready for her, and all of her clothes are ready, so, [Aaron] Oh, we also moved all of, 'cause right now we have all of Truitt's clothes, in our bedroom, like right below the changing station, so that we can like change him, and put clothes there, but we moved those. Now he's got his clothes in the boys' room. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] I'm imagining, we're probably gonna move him into the boys' room soon, right? [Jennifer] Soon, yeah. [Aaron] And then he's gonna be one of the big boys. [Jennifer] Uh? [Aaron] I know [Jennifer] Everyone's growing up too fast. [Aaron] Who in the world? [Jennifer] Elliot feels like he's seven feet tall. Doesn't he feel so big? [Aaron] Yeah, he's gonna be a tall one. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But it's awesome, seeing them grow, we were just talking tonight about if we would have had children earlier, which kinda goes into a little bit into our story, but if we would have started, day one, we'd have a 13 year old. [Jennifer] Yeah, just recognizing, how long we've been married and-- [Aaron] And we probably have 13 kids. So, [Jennifer] At our rate. [Aaron] Yeah at our our rate, yeah. Hey, I just wanted to also bring up something that I've been doing lately, and maybe you can chime in on this, Jennifer, as well, but for the men listening, something I've been trying to do, I know not everyone has our situation. We totally understand that. We get that. But Jennifer and I both, I would say I work the majority of the time, it used to be much more equal, but as we've had more kids, Jennifer's desires, and our desires has changed to, you spending a lot more time homeschooling, [Jennifer] My work just looks different [Aaron] Totally looks different, but the idea is that we're keeping things going, but what I've been doing lately, is letting you have Fridays to yourself, often that's so you can get, you know, the work that you need to get done, done. But sometimes it's just to go. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] To get into the Word. To meet with a lady [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] From the church. To just have time to yourself, or a little bit of both, like you get some work done in the morning, and then you have like a hair appointment, or you have a meeting with a friend, [Jennifer] Yeah, I try and use that time to schedule appointments-- [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] But um, I will say this, I've really enjoyed it, and it's been super beneficial in a lot of ways, but I also recognize that change is coming, with having the baby and post-partum, and all that. So it'll be something that we reevaluate, come very quickly. [Aaron] Right 'cause we go through seasons, and ebbs and flows, and we have to adjust our schedules and our way of living to the situations in life. But, I just wanna encourage the men out there, that even if you're not in a situation, where maybe your wife works with you, or works at home, or maybe, I don't know, like your situations are gonna look differently. The idea is being intentional, to let your wife know that, especially if she doesn't have like, a regular nine-to-five job if she is at home with the kids, if you have a similar situation in that aspect, is giving them time. It may not be every week, maybe it can't be every week, but if it's once a month, if it's every other week, if it's for a couple hours, there's times like, "Hey why don't you, "I got the kids you get out of here--" [Jennifer] And maybe it can't be during the day, but it's at night or, if it can't be during the week, it's you know Saturday morning or something like that. [Aaron] Yeah, there's always going to be a way to just let your wife know that you're thinking about her time, and also, as men who are leading our wives, spiritually, giving them time specifically like, maybe it's at home like, "Hey, why don't you just go lock yourself in the bedroom? "Open up the Bible like, read, journal, "go take a bath, and listen to some worship music." Giving them time to themselves, time to recharge, regenerate. I know some women probably recharge around people, not alone, but, whatever it is, maybe they need to go be with some friends. Just, keeping that in your mind, something we've been practicing, like we said, it's a it's a seasonal thing. So it's not necessarily that it's always going to be this way, but currently Fridays have been your day, and you've been enjoying them, we've been slowing down on that with the baby coming. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Also 'cause, you're having less energy, and you're like, "I just wanna be home." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But, it's been a cool thing. [Jennifer] I think it's a really good encouragement, and I think it's good for husbands to hear, that when it's even spontaneous, 'cause this was something that we kind of scheduled out, and looked at our situation, and said, "This needs to be happening." But even when it's at random, you know, spontaneous, it's a huge encouragement to the wife's heart to know that the husband is thinking of her like that. You've done that for me plenty of times over the years and so, I love that you're bringing this up. I think it's cool. [Aaron] So hope you're encouraged by that. One more thing before we get into our, our list of our favorite non-toxic products is, we just want to invite you to join the Parenting Prayer Challenge. We created this prayer challenge, it's very similar to the Marriage Prayer Challenge, where you get 30, 30 some-odd emails everyday, reminding you to pray for your children, and giving you a topic to pray for over them. and you can actually sign up for one for a son, or one for a daughter, or you can sign up for both, which is pretty awesome 'cause some of you probably have a son and a daughter, or just sons, or just daughters, or just one or the other, but you can go, you go to parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, and you sign up, it's completely free, and we just pray that God blesses you, and your prayer life for your children, because praying for your children is so important. Just like praying for your marriage. Just like praying for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Prayer is so important. God wants to be praying people, and so this is just a fun challenge. It's a way of being a catalyst for your prayer life, for your children. It's parentingprayerchallenge.com, it's completely free. [Jennifer] Okay, so for some of you listening you may have already read "The Unveiled Wife," if anything we talked about today, you know sparks interest and you haven't read that book yet, that was our first book that we came out with, you should go check it out, just because it shares more in depth of our journey, of kind of coming to this place of like, being aware of healthy living, and living a healthy lifestyle. But we're going to kind of summarize it. Just to kick off this episode, just so that you guys can, just get some background into Aaron and Jen. How about that? Okay. [Aaron] Let's see how quick we can make this summary. [Jennifer] Okay so I would say that when we first got married, Aaron, we didn't really, we didn't have a strong foundation of what it look like to live healthy. We grew up on fast food, and and home cook meals, but there was no, [Aaron] We didn't have an awareness of healthy living at all. [Jennifer] Yeah, and so we didn't really care about looking at ingredients on products, or you know reading the labels of things. I would say that you know I used all the all the really good smelling lotions and body washes, and if you didn't have more than three or four in your shower, it was like, "What are you doing?" You know, that type of thing. Fragrant candles, the kind of laundry detergent that you just never think about, you just use it because your parents used, or that's what so-and-so use. I remember using MAC makeup. This one, actually, I didn't really ever talk about this one, but this was one that affected me, in my teens because I was caking on the foundation, but I was using it to cover up acne, [Aaron] Which that made more acne. [Jennifer] Which made more acne. And I was actually allergic to something that was in it, and so I stopped using that, even probably around like 18. But anyways, the point that I'm getting at is that we didn't care about what was inside of these bottles that we were using to put on our skin, you know, the soap that we use, the body wash, the lip balms, the hairspray, we just consumed it. [Aaron] Not internally necessarily. [Aaron] We were consumers. We bought what we liked, we didn't have any consideration of what it was, and I actually think, back then, not very many people did. There was movements of it, but social media wasn't a huge thing back then, so not a lot of people were talking about it. Like news wasn't talking about it, like it was just, you got these products, and it wasn't until there was some sort of, big blow up or news story about something that people were aware of something, but I think with, now looking back, everyone is much more considerate about what's in products, people care about it, but back then we didn't have that experience. No one was telling us to, like, "Oh, do you know what those ingredients are?" Can you even understand what there, like, we just figured, like, "Oh, that's what they put in everything. [Jennifer] Yeah, and then, on the side of like, I'm not gonna go too much into this, but medicine, it was kind of just like, the Benadryl, Tylenol, like, whatever you could get over the counter type stuff. And I wasn't raised with a really big awareness of homeopathy, or how to, you know, use what you have at home. [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] To help through sickness or things like that. Or to even just look at what's the root of the problem here? Of whatever symptoms you have. [Aaron] Or having an understanding of what those, why those symptoms exist. How fevers work, and how, like, why are you coughing, and sneezing, and these kinds of things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Rather than just, medicating the symptoms, which we're not totally against medication. [Jennifer] No, I'm just saying this is kind of like, where we came from. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] So we get married, and I, you know, it was just like a normal thing people talked about, to go on birth control, so I did that. 'Cause I thought that was-- [Aaron] It's what you do. You get married, [Jennifer] What we were supposed to do. [Aaron] birth control, wait. [Jennifer] Yeah, wait. And I only on it for about two to three months, and it like, drastically effected my body, and so that was the first thing that I noticed should go. And so we did that. But that was also in conjunction with trying to find a solution for what we were dealing with in our marriage, which started immediately-- [Aaron] Physically, yeah. [Jennifer] And for those of you who don't know, Aaron and I, we struggled with intimacy right off the bat, like, zero, none. [Aaron] Like sex, specifically we couldn't have sex. It was very painful for you, and we've talked about this in the past, there's a few episodes where we talked about our story, and in your book you talk about it, we talk about it in our new book, "Marriage After God." We talk about it so much because it was such a influential season in our life, and how it brought us to our knees before God. Because, it drew out of us, so much other sins, and frustrations, and bitterness, this situation we were going through. Which is often when we go through things that are hard. They often will draw out those negative things in us. Which is cool, because then God gets to deal with them. But that was, yeah, we didn't know it, you would go to see doctors, and they would say, "You're young." [Jennifer] "You're fine. [Aaron] "You're fine-- [Jennifer] "You're really great." [Aaron] "there's nothing wrong, "this should be working just fine." And then we'd go home and cry, because it's not fine, it doesn't work, nothing's changing, it hurts you. [Jennifer] Yeah, it was like at least if you told me that something was wrong, I can work with that. I can't work with nothing. But moving on, so year four of our marriage, we had a conversation with some friends, we were being really transparent and honest with them about our struggles, and they kind of like, I remember them sitting across from us, just looking super confused, like, "How-- [Aaron] Dumbfounded, or like, "Are you serious?" [Jennifer] "Yeah, is this really happening?" but she goes, the girl, she goes, "The only thing I can think of to help relate your story, "to someone else's that I heard is, "a friend of mine has PCOS, and she changed out all "of her products to be more organic, "and just cleaner, and three months later, "she ended up pregnant." Which people with PCOS, it's a hard thing to do, and they weren't even trying to get pregnant. She was just trying to heal some of her other symptoms. And we quickly disregarded that because we thought, "Well, we're not trying "to get pregnant, we're just trying to start off "with the first thing, which is-- [Aaron] Yeah, how do I have sex? [Jennifer] "sexual intimacy." And we didn't think about it again for about five, six months. And then what happened, Aaron you share. [Aaron] Well, I would just, it got worse of course, 'cause we're like, "There's like no hope, "like this in never gonna change." You know, it started off with a lot of hope, like, "Oh, it'll get better, it'll get, "but it can't possibly keep going the same way." And it just did, and you know, I'm praying through this, God was working in our marriage. There was a, if you read in our book, in both of our books, actually, there's this moment that God gets ahold of my heart, and just totally convicts me of my wrong heart, towards my wife. Not just over the situation about our sex, but about a lot of things. And it brought me to my knees, I repented, and I just said, "Lord, I'm gonna obey you. "I'm gonna walk with you, "and I'm gonna love my wife, "regardless of if I ever get what I think I deserve, "or whatever she owes me, or whatever. "I'm gonna love her. "The way you've called me to." And that was the beginning of a lot of transformations, in our marriage, in our life, and our being. But how, I don't know how, it was like. [Jennifer] It was shortly after-- [Aaron] It was like that weekend, maybe, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] or the next weekend, or that week, 'cause it was at church that this you know revelation that God gave to me happened. And I'm in the shower, and I'm just praying, 'cause I'm still like, "God, there's gotta be something, "that's gonna fix this." 'Cause even though, I've totally committed my heart to say "I'm gonna love my wife," [Jennifer] You still wanted change-- [Aaron] I still want a change, right? But my heart was totally in a different place now. And I'm just praying, and I'm like. "Lord, what is it? "It's been since before we were married, "like this is, since we've been married, I mean, "and there's gotta be something." And I looked down in the shower actually, and there's a face wash in there, and I just immediately remembered this story about the PCOS, and the girl that got rid of her stuff, and I just asked myself, I was like, "Is it possible that there's something reacting "with my wife's body?" And then I started thinking like, "What has there been, that you've used, "ever since the beginning, of our marriage?" [Jennifer] 'Cause shampoo and conditioner changed out, body wash changed out, a lot things changed, in those four years, but my face wash was the one main thing that I always was consistent with. [Aaron] And so, I said, I just yelled from the shower, I remember like, "What have you been using "since before we were married?" And you were like, "My f-why?" You were like, confused. Anyways, I take the face wash out of the shower, and I hop onto our computer, and I just start researching every ingredient on the thing. And there was like, first of all, like, half the ingredients were, I went on this site, and it talks about the toxicity level, of ingredients, right? You type the ingredient in, and it just tells you what the level is. [Jennifer] Had you ever done anything like that before? [Aaron] Never, never done like that before. Didn't even know it existed, I had to Google, and I'm searching like, how do you figure out, I'm typing these, and then this site shows up. And like half the ingredients in this thing, were-- [Jennifer] It was EWG. [Aaron] Toxic. [Jennifer] EWG.com. [Aaron] EWG.com, I don't even know, is it still a thing? [Jennifer] I think so. [Aaron] Okay. So half the products were toxic at some level. And then there was several of the ingredients that had specific terms that it said it was, that the affect. Specifically the endocrine system in your body. Then I looked up, I was like, "What's the endocrine system? "I'll just start looking it up." I'm getting all technical, and we're not scientists, we're not biologists, we don't know, like, I'm not gonna try and diagnose people, but all I know is the Lord lead me to something. [Jennifer] We were putting pieces together. [Aaron] I started researching, and regardless if it has any effect, the fact that it had all these toxic chemicals, and I'm like, "Maybe she should, regardless, "she probably shouldn't be putting this on her body." and the endocrine system something that's, it's super important to the whole reproductive system. To the normal function of the woman's body. Like secretion of normal hormones, and I was like, "Dang, that sounds like a lot "of like the things that we deal with." And so it-- [Jennifer] The specific thing that you're talking about is parabens. [Aaron] Parabens, yeah. [Jennifer] So there's four, different types of parabens, in this specific face wash. [Aaron] Methyl, propyl, like all these different kinds. [Jennifer] And this was before parabens was a thing, [Aaron] Yeah, like no bottle said paraben-free, back then. [Jennifer] Nobody was talking about it yet, but it soon became a thing, shortly after that. [Aaron] A few years later. [Jennifer] I mean, I remember a few years later, you'd go into like, Ulta, or Sephora, and you'd start seeing, you know, makeup lines that say, paraben free this, paraben free that. [Aaron] Which is interesting because back then, no one cared. I should say no on knew. And then we're like researching this and finding this out, and I don't wanna say, like started move, we actually didn't start anything. Other people are already trying to get this moving, but because of social media things like that, that it exist. Things were a lot slower. I think things are way faster now. But I was just like, "Hey. "I want to be with you, physically." And in this is a big deal because Jennifer has been using this forever, she believed that without it, she was gonna have acne. And be, and feel ugly, or whatever it was, and I remember I was like, "Hey, would you get this up?" [Jennifer] I said no. [Aaron] And she was like "No!" And I'm like, "I'd rather you have acne and us be able "to be together, than you have clean skin, clear skin." [Jennifer] And then I was like, "Well maybe there's something, okay. "I'll just do it 'cause you asked me." [Aaron] So you did, you chose to put it away. And now, I'm sure everyone's thinking like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go use this to get my wife, "or get someone to stop doing something." But, I, my heart was not just to get her to stop using this. I actually had never thought about it until this moment, and I was just like, "Would you be willing to experiment with me?" Like, "Let's just delete this from your life." [Jennifer] Yeah, it was an experiment. And here's the thing you guys, three days later, three days later, I was at work and I remember just feeling different, and I called Aaron and I was like, "I don't get too excited but, I feel different, "and I wanted you to know that my body feels, "it feels like things are changing." And I feel like it was just like two more days after that that we had sex for what feels like the first time. [Aaron] Yeah, in four and a half years. [Jennifer] Like pain free. [Aaron] Pain free. Not just pain free, but like it was enjoyable. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Like it was, like we were like, "Whoa. "Like that's what it's supposed to be like. [Jennifer] There was nothing else that was gonna convince me, that what we stumbled upon, was the thing. [Aaron] Right, and I would also say, we, God lead us a new place, in our hearts toward him. We had been repentant, of things that were going on, and I think that the Lord revealed thing to us, so I would say I definitely think that there is certain things are engaging, or interacting with your body. I mean we know over the years that you're sensitive to certain things, I'm sensitive to certain things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But I also think that the Lord, was like working in us. So I'm not trying to over-spiritualize it but, I don't wanna take away from what God was doing. [Jennifer] Sure. [Aaron] And he revealed this to us-- [Jennifer] Well and I think, he's the one that revealed this to us, and it was really awesome, and so the next step was, "I'm getting rid of all parabens." Like parabens became this like, [Aaron] We literally threw [Both] Everything, [Jennifer] And I am telling you guys, [Aaron] All of our shampoos, all of her makeup. [Jennifer] It was it! [Aaron] My makeup too. I'm just kiddin'. [Jennifer] It was in everything. It was in so much stuff. People will message me on Instagram, and they're like, "So you know, "You talked about parabens in the "Unveiled Wife," "and what kind of stuff did you have to look at?" It was like, [Aaron] Everything. [Jennifer] I tell 'em, "everything." And so what's funny is that, I look at our shower now from what it used to be, and it's like you had mentioned earlier, [Aaron] There's two things in there. [Jennifer] Yeah, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode. 'cause we just thought it'd be fun to share with you guys, some of the things that we use now, but this indecent, this thing that happened over something as small as face wash, is what stimulated our hearts to say, "Hey, what were putting in our bodies. "What we're putting on our bodies, "is important because it has an effect on us." [Aaron] And I mean it's definitely not our main focus, I mean everyone that listens to our podcast would know that this is not, we're not like a health and fitness-- [Jennifer] Freaks, [Aaron] Podcast. No, we just know, that there's a holistic view that God has of us. He wants us to love him with our minds, our souls, our bodies. Like so, when we look at the world it's not just, "Oh, we can be unwise over here, "as long as we're wise over here." we look at idea of, what we, we gotta be wise in every aspect. And we seek God on that. So what's wrong with just, caring about what goes on our body and in our body? Not out of a, like, not putting something on my body and not putting something in my body is not making me more holy. It's making me more healthy. [Jennifer] It's taking care of yourself. [Aaron] it's taking care of the body that God's given me. [Jennifer] Yeah, and I will say this, back then, it felt a little bit harder to know what to switch to, because-- [Aaron] Well, there was also less things, I think. [Jennifer] Less cleaner things available and so I just wanted to make that clear, that, you know, anyone who wanted to make a switch today, like if they want to go to their products or-- [Aaron] There's a million products now. [Jennifer] be more healthy in this way, there are so many good products out there and so, it's a lot easier, I would say. But another thing that triggered our healthy lifestyle, was doing the Sugar Busters diet, which we-- [Aaron] This was long time ago. [Jennifer] that was just a couple months, after all of this, and we made the commitment to do it together. We even took a class on it do you remember that? [Aaron] I do. [Jennifer] And they taught us how to read labels-- [Aaron] It was at the church. [Jennifer] Yeah, it was at our church. [Aaron] The church put this like health class on. It was cool. [Jennifer] Yeah so, it taught us how the read labels, and so I remember going grocery shopping with you, and we're looking at the back of like pasta sauce-- [Aaron] Well, everything we bought, had added sugar in it. Every single thing. [Jennifer] But we were like, amazed, we were like, "And this has it too!" [Aaron] I was like, "Bread doesn't have sugar in it." and every loaf of bread, was like, the second ingredient was sugar. And we're like, "Okay, what's going on here?" So anyways, [Jennifer] And then you had to go with a list of what are sugars called? because there's a lot of-- [Aaron] All the different names of sugar, yeah [Jennifer] Different names, for it. But that was another one, when we talk about eating, like that was what stimulated our healthy movement towards eating healthier and just buying things so that we're aware of what we're putting inside of our bodies. It doesn't mean we don't consume sugar, and we don't, you know, we'll have Chick-fil-A, we'll go out and-- [Aaron] No, but that education, the learning about how to read labels. What are ingredients, you know, how they order the ingredients, that's important, I can give a little tip on that. Even though we don't still do Sugar Busters, that month or how many? It was a couple months maybe. [Jennifer] It grew a muscle in us, We now, that's how we shop. When we go grocery shopping, of course there's gonna be stuff that we grab that has added sugars to it, but for the most part, we look at the ingredients in almost everything we buy. Everything, now especially with you, you need to be gluten-free. We look at, we actually buy less things that have wheat in it period, because of that, but it was a good tool in our tool belt, as we talk about in "Marriage After God," to just help us be healthier, help our kids be healthier. They enjoy things, here and there, we just had icecream tonight, so we're not like, sans sugar in our life, we're sans sugar all the time. [Jennifer] I was gonna say, we try and make the best opportunity, or we take every opportunity, when we can, to be healthy, eat healthy, and you know, choose the right thing, but it doesn't mean that we don't get, [Aaron] We also enjoy things. [Jennifer] Yeah, we also enjoy things, so, [Aaron] In moderation. [Jennifer] in moderation. That's good. [Aaron] So, Oh I wanna give that quick tip real quick, 'cause people are probably thinking like, "Well, what about the ingredients?" Just a quick tip on ingredients, the order of ingredients on the box, so like starting from the first, to the second, to the third, the higher up an ingredient is on the box, the more of that ingredient is in the product. So if sugar is in the top three ingredients, that means there's a lot of sugar in that item. So if wheat's the first or water, that's how they order the ingredients, based off of amount of ingredients. [Jennifer] So here's another one, it's really random, but I've been seeing a naturopath for my thyroid issues through this last year, and one of the things she asked me is if we use Weed and Feed. And I didn't even know, 'cause you usually do-- [Aaron] For the lawns? Yeah. [Jennifer] the lawns, yeah. And that was just one instance where she was like, "Well, instead of using that, "why don't you just pick the weeds?" like-- [Aaron] Or leave the weeds. [Jennifer] or leave the weeds. So there's a lots of things in our life that we can look at and evaluate, and say, "Oh, we should probably make change." It doesn't have to happen all at once, but it is something that we should be aware of, to go, "Hey what's happening to this exposure "that we're doing to our bodies. "And how can we maintain a healthy body?' [Aaron] And the Weed and Feed was important because was saying, "You guys walk on "that grass all the time." And like, it goes into your skin, and you're going to be affected by it. Because you're you're working with your thyroid and all of these things, effect that. Which is interesting because, we knew back then that you were probably sensitive to some stuff, and now we know now, you are definitely sensitive to things. Your body's gonna react, maybe differently than someone who, has normal functioning thyroid, or endocrine system or all that. [Jennifer] Right. Okay so, we we're just going to get into kind of a list of our non-toxic products because-- [Aaron] These are literally things that we use, pretty much on a regular basis. [Jennifer] Two reasons, one we just thought it would be fun to share these things, and if you guys you know want to know more, you can reach out to us on Instagram @marriage-- [Aaron] Reach out to Jennifer about the [Jennifer] I was going to say @marriageaftergod. [Aaron] Ah there ya go. [Jennifer] or @unveiledwife We also know that everyone's always looking for, you know, new things or ideas or inspiration so, we just hope that by sharing these, it's an encouragement to you, and give you some information. [Aaron] And I'll also let you guys know that we're not like necessarily sponsored by any of these people. We're just we're literally going to share with you guys the things that we love-- [Jennifer] Now I will say, [Aaron] and use. [Jennifer] that some of these things that I put on the list, and we've been using Young Living Essential Oils for [Aaron] Several years now. [Jennifer] about four or five years now. And we did just recently, just be more open to sharing the business side of things on social media. You may have seen that, maybe not. And so I know you said that we're not sponsored by this, but we,-- [Aaron] But we use it. [Jennifer] but we do use Young Living, and we do believe in what they have to offer, and and have really fallen in love with their products. So, I just wanted to put that out there, just so that people know and we're clear about that. [Aaron] We're not trying to be tricky or anything, we just, these are literally products we love and no one's asked us to share about them. Except for us, wanting to share about them. [Jennifer] Okay so when it comes to cleaning I really love the Thieves Spray, which in the beginning I was using wrong, because I didn't know it could be diluted. I literally would just put the spray cap-- [Aaron] And everything was just like slimy and had like, film all over the [Jennifer] Uh yeah, like a residue. [Aaron] We had residue everywhere. [Jennifer] On the countertops. [Aaron] Oh man, there was no germs I bet. [Jennifer] Ah, probably not. So the Thieves container comes, and then you dilute it, and it lasts a long time. But it smells really good, and I can use it for-- [Aaron] Everything. [Jennifer] I feel like every, one product, I feel like I can use for so much. [Aaron] And what's awesome is like, if you sprayed it on food by accident, I'm not saying you should eat it, but it's not going to be like spraying Lysol on something. Like you spray the table, you spray the the highchair, you spray, you're not worried about this, you know hurting your children. Which is awesome. It's an added benefit to this kind of cleaning product. [Jennifer] Another awesome cleaning product, is by a company called Norwex, it's really awesome you guys, they do these microfiber cloths, but they're like-- [Aaron] Aren't they infused with like silver? [Jennifer] Yeah, they're infused with silver, and they just, I don't know what about it is, but like, when you go to clean the stove, you barely have to even scrape, it's just like, [Aaron] Reusable [Jennifer] It like makes you want to clean. The window rag, you just you put water on it, and just wipe your window down, and they look crystal clear. I bought these mitts for the kids that have, they're just really easy slip-on gloves, but they're good for dusting, [Aaron] So that they can help clean? [Jennifer] So that they can help clean. Oh and our mop, I use the Norwex mop, and it's just really nice. It's good, I like it. I like their stuff. [Aaron] I wouldn't say those are necessarily, healthy products, they're just good products that we love using. [Jennifer] Oh yeah. [Aaron] On that specific one, [Jennifer] On the Norwex side of things. [Aaron] I did wanna go back, and just real quick, the Thieves Spray, we just talked about, I wanted to say it like it what it replaces. Because I think, as we go, we should just remind them, also, what it replaces like, it replaces Lysol spray, it replaces window spray, it replaces like toilet cleaner, it replaces all these things that you'd use to clean your countertops, or your floors, or your tables, or your, it does all of those things. [Jennifer] So for all you minimalists out there, [Aaron] You get one thing, and it does all. [Jennifer] It'll make your cleaning closet, or cupboard very pretty looking. [Aaron] It also smells really nice. [Jennifer] It does, that's true. For laundry, again that they sell Thieves Laundry Detergent and we've really liked that. And I just noticed that, there's a drastic difference when washing towels and washcloths. They're just so much cleaner. [Aaron] And they smell fresher, and they feel nicer. I've been really liking that, as well. This is this one's kind of like for me. So Jennifer, actually, doesn't use the the Thieves Laundry Soap for me, because I'm really sensitive, my skin, if we, if there's any laundry detergent that has any sort of dyes or perfumes or anything, I get like a rash, on my whole body. [Jennifer] If I even think about changing it, he breaks out-- [Aaron] Now, it happens, we've gone, we've stayed at hotels in the past, and I wake up in the morning and I'm just like red, and I go down and I'm like, "What are you guys washing your stuff with?" And they're like "We don't know, why?" And I'm like "I like I need something else." It's like horrible 'cause I'm like sleeping on these blankets and pillows, and so the only thing that we found work, we've actually tried venturing out, into other things, is the Arm & Hammer Sensitive Skin laundry detergent. [Jennifer] But it's fragrance-free, it's clear, [Aaron] Dye free. I'm sure it's got a couple of bad things in it, but literally, it's the only one that I've been able to use and not like break out in a rash on my body. But that comes in a huge bottle and we use it for me so. [Jennifer] Okay so earlier, we mentioned the shower, and just how the bathroom is much [Aaron] less cluttered, [Jennifer] Yeah, less cluttered. So we use dr. Bronner's for just about everything when it comes to washing our bodies. [Aaron] Body wash, shampoo, [Jennifer] I use it in the kids hair, I throw it in their bath and they have different scents, and they come in big bottles [Aaron] I like the rose scented one. [Jennifer] I will say this, the first couple times that we used it, do you remember how it felt like, really different, almost oily, but then once you got out of the shower it was like, [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause it doesn't suds the same way, as like a regular shampoo and also, you have to dilute it. And so you if you use too much, it's like everywhere but it comes off really easy. Doesn't leave any residue, but it's, we love it we use it for everything. Apparently you can use dr. Bronner's for like, laundry soap, [Jennifer] Yep. and dish washing soap [Jennifer] You can use it for a lot of stuff. [Aaron] We use it mainly in the shower, but yeah, you can [Jennifer] I use it for my face wash now, face and body wash, [Aaron] You can use it for everything. We wanna make a note that, the company that that owns dr. Bronner's, they write a bunch of weird stuff on the packaging so we're not necessarily endorsing what is written on the packaging, but we love the product. [Jennifer] When it comes to my like, lotions and things like that, Cetaphil is pretty bland, there's not very much stuff in it. I've used that for years now. I love the orange blossom and ART brand from Young Living when it comes to face moisturizer. The Genesis lotion is also really great, especially because, well, it smells clean and fresh, but it's not super fragrant. That one's good, just an overall lotion, I use that one for the kids. But also, Aaron, [Aaron] Yeah, there's a lotion that I, I hate lotions, like I don't like putting anything in my hands, even though, like right now, my hands are so dry because it's so dry out. But I hate feeling like greasy and the lotion I love the most is from Bend Soap Company, they're actually right here in our hometown. And they make this goat milk lotion, they make goat milk soap, they make a lot of really awesome things. So if you have really sensitive skin, like eczema, things like that, their soaps are amazing for it. That's actually why they started the company, 'cause one of their sons had issues with skin like that. [Jennifer] What I like is their milk bath, it comes in these like shavings, [Aaron] Oh yeah. [Jennifer] And it's just, you toss it in the bath with the kids, and it's just so fun. [Aaron] So just go check out Bend Soap Company, I can't remember the domain, but just Google Bend Soap Company. And their lotion, does not feel greasy. Once it's rubbed in, it's like, it smells nice, it feels great. [Jennifer] You don't have to go wash your hands [Aaron] It feels soft, yeah I don't have to wash my hands afterwards. [Jennifer] For toothpaste we do use Young Living. The Thieves whitening, specifically, is really good for us. And then we use it the kid's ones for the kids. But for the deodorant, this was a big one for me, because I feel like every time I try to use like, a natural deodorant, it just felt weird [Aaron] They don't work. [Jennifer] and didn't work [Jennifer] Yeah, but there's a new company out I'd say a fairly new. They're gaining ground, they're like in Target now, [Aaron] Yeah, they actually have some body washes now, I saw. [Jennifer] Oh really? [Aaron] Yeah, I almost bought a bottle of it. [Jennifer] Oh you should, I'll have to try it. [Aaron] But I like my Bronner's [Jennifer] I know. It's called Native. And they have great scents, it goes on smooth, almost silky like, and it works. Someone asked me, "Do you think it'll work during postpartum?" And I'm like, "That I haven't tried yet, "so we'll know this time around." But I've really really enjoyed Native. [Aaron] Yeah, it doesn't have the heavy metals, or nothin' in it, [Jennifer] Paraben-free [Aaron] So it won't necessarily protect you from perspiring, I should say. It's not an antiperspirant, it's a deodorant. So it protects from the smell, but-- [Jennifer] I don't, really notice-- [Aaron] Yeah, well, it's winter right now, so I don't know, sometimes. [Jennifer] I've been using it for a while though. [Aaron] But I like it a lot. It smells great, it feels good, and deodorant is another one that's really been a, hard one for me because, like, pretty much any deodorant I use, I used to use the Arm & Hammer deodorant, but that has some metals in it, and so I've since switched to Native, but Arm & Hammer and Native are the only ones that don't give me rashes on my arms. And they're painful, you've see them. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] Like, I they hurt. And I've loved their deodorants. [Jennifer] Another good product for chapstick, is Burt's Bees. [Aaron] Yeah that's good. Especially their vanilla brand, [Aaron] I think a lot of people are like, "yeah, I like that." Burt's Bees, they've been pretty synonymous for chapsticks. [Jennifer] That or coconut oil. Which coconut oil, you guys, you could used for literally everything. [Aaron] Yeah, we should do an episode on that. [Jennifer] Dry skin, lips-- [Aaron] intimacy, oh we're gonna talk about it. [Jennifer] Lubricancy, or, lubricancy? [Aaron] Lubricancy [Jennifer] Whatever that is. [Aaron] It's like, new word. [Jennifer] Okay before we get there, supplements, some things that I've been taking his last year, Nordic Naturals-- [Aaron] You've been, just real quick, you've been getting a lot, into the supplements, just because of your-- [Jennifer] Thyroid. [Aaron] your thyroid. So you've been learning a lot about these. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Because we're, we're trying to avoid going with other stronger, methods, we're trying to do the natural way, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] and you've been, pretty consistent with this. [Jennifer] Yeah, and just as a testament, after being on the supplements, I have actually, my numbers have gone down, and in my symptoms have pretty much dissipated, but I've also been pregnant the last nine months. [Aaron] Which does change things, yep. [Jennifer] So it does change things. But Nordic Naturals has a really great, strawberry flavored, omega-3. Which I love. And I've been taking-- [Aaron] So it doesn't just taste like fish? It tastes like strawberries? That's good. [Jennifer] Yeah. We've taking D3 a lot. Young Living has a great line of supplements that we use, like the vitamin C, the vitamin B, Multigreens, [Aaron] Yeah, I've been loving their Master Formula. It's like a pack of like five little supplements, and vitamin B, C, D3, all these different ones. I've been taking that, pretty much regularly, every day, I really enjoy that one. [Jennifer] Cool. Okay so for pregnancy and post-partum care, my friend recommended ancient magnesium lotion for restless legs, and it works. [Aaron] Do you get restless legs when you're pregnant? [Jennifer] Yeah, mostly towards the end, [Aaron] I'm being facetious, because I know. [Jennifer] I know, Aaron does the massaging, with the lotion, [Aaron] Yeah [Jennifer] Thank you, Aaron. [Aaron] You've had pretty bad restless legs this time. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] And the magnesium lotion-- [Jennifer] It's been good. [Aaron] And lavender, on your feet. [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] Has been, really helping you. [Jennifer] Yep, that's true. [Aaron] 'Cause I can tell, 'cause then you fall asleep. [Jennifer] Yeah. I've love it. And then the other thing that helps, has helped me during this pregnancy is the Young Living Deep Relief roller and I don't necessarily put it on, but like I smell it, like especially when I'm nauseous, or anything like that. [Aaron] I personally don't like this one because of how cold it feels. It's like all this-- [Jennifer] When you put it on, yeah. [Aaron] Like the peppermint in it, I just can't. [Jennifer] The cooling effect. [Aaron] But it does work, but it's too cold for me. So you brought up makeup in the beginning, I remember you used to go to the MAC store and you were like, "We have to go to the mall, I need some MAC." And I was like, "Are you serious? "You look beautiful." I've never liked you wearing makeup. You remember this? I was like, "You don't need to wear makeup." But you've used since not used makeup, the MAC makeup and for a long time, you didn't use almost anything, because we couldn't find anything. What do you use now? I'm sure some of the women are like, "What kind of makeup do you use?" [Jennifer] Yeah, so I would say, like my everyday would be, a primer from Urban Decay, which just kind of holds the eyeshadow on, and the eye shadow is also from Urban Decay. And I just like it, they're neutral colors, easy to put on really quick, and the times that I do use foundation, it's a powder foundation from Young Living, it's called Savvy Minerals, it's like a mineral makeup. And it goes on super light and so, [Aaron] But that's rare. [Jennifer] Yeah, it's like on Sundays. [Aaron] I would say you used to use a lot more makeup, and now it's like, you do a little eyeliner, [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] You do a little mascara, [Jennifer] I don't use eyeliner actually. [Aaron] You don't use eyeliner? [Jennifer] No but my mascara, Smashbox has been a really good favorite, paraben-free, and Clinique. [Aaron] Clinique, [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] So no eyeliner, but mascara, okay, and then you use some lipstick sometimes. [Jennifer] Every once in a while. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] The Burt's Bees tinted is really nice. [Aaron] 'cause it's kinda like lipstick, and it's moisturizing [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, so I'm just making a note that you wear way less makeup than you use to [Jennifer] Oh yeah. [Aaron] And I think you're beautiful. [Jennifer] Thank you. [Aaron] Yeah, well, I'm not lying. I've never been a fan of a lot of makeup, and because of this, you've since found contentment in just a very little. [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] Which I think is really awesome. [Jennifer] Okay so when it comes to intimacy, you guys we ditched pretty much, well, we did all lubricants because of-- [Aaron] And we've tried a lot of lubricants 'cause, [Jennifer] We've tried a lot [Aaron] 'cause, things didn't work. [Jennifer] But there were so many of 'em that had parabens in it. [Aaron] All of them. [Jennifer] Every single one, [Jennifer] We didn't even know, [Aaron] Had parabens, yeah. [Jennifer] And then other things on top of that that were just not good for you, so, we stuck to coconut oil for a really long time. [Aaron] So, tip, coconut oil's amazing, for that, specifically, and it's so good for you too. And it feels good. That was a little side note, for the adults in the room. So, I guess what we wanna get at, and I'm sure there's like a ton more things that we-- [Jennifer] I know, [Aaron] we use that are healthy, and we could probably, make a whole other list, but we essentially, wanted to show you that we've simplified, we found the handful of products that we love, and that we know what's in them, and we just, what's really awesome about this is, we it makes shopping easier, it's actually cheaper 'cause we're not buying a bunch of stuff and always experimenting, we're not always saying like "Well, let's try this new thing." We just say "Nope, we love this product. "Let's just go with it, we know it works." And so it makes, we don't think as much about those things. We know that we're minimizing the amount of chemicals we're putting on us, on our kids. And so we can have some peace of mind, and just one less thing that we have to think about, in our home. And we can put more intention into the spiritual growth of our family, into our careers, into our children, into each other, and we're not like worried about these other things. [Jennifer] Yeah, or when you say, "don't put as much "thought into them," I would say initially we do, because we do look at ingredients. We look and we do our research and figure out what we want to use, and we're in agreement when we choose things, but then, once we know what it is, it's kinda like that going back to that spaghetti sauce, once we found the one that didn't have sugar in it, we just stick to that one. [Aaron] And it's great. We love it. [Jennifer] And it makes it easy. It makes it so easy when you know what you are good with. [Aaron] Well, and grocery shopping's hard. I don't know if everyone who's listening is like, "Yeah grocery shopping's hard." Like, for us it's hard, like, so once you, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every single time, we've kinda, we slowly over time with built, our list of things that we like, "Oh, these are the things-- [Jennifer] Stick to the basics [Aaron] "that we can, "we're just gonna go to those things." And some of them are a little but more expensive. But what's awesome is we don't get as much of everything, like we get those handful of things and I was just at the grocery store the other day, and I was just thinking how awesome it is, that we have these habits on the things that we get. There's just the staples in our home, there's things that we get often. We've already looked at the ingredients. We know we enjoy them. We know that we like them. And it just makes these normal, everyday things so much more enjoyable and easy. They're less stressful like, all around like, this this this way of thinking, is just good for our everyday life. To simplify, to know the things that we like, and we create the good habit. And then that habit is there. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel, every single time we walk to the grocery store. Or every time we are shopping for something for our home, and for our kids. [Jennifer] And we also gotta know when we do choose that organic, clean, non-toxic, or non-GMO, whatever the thing is, we can't be up so obsessive about it that when we go out, or someone offers us, or brings us-- [Aaron] Right. That's a good point. [Jennifer] food during, postpartum, or whatever it is, that we're not nitpicky in a way that promotes-- [Aaron] Is this from that specific brand? [Jennifer] Yeah, let's not be like that. [Aaron] Yeah, we're not, yeah. [Jennifer] And I guess what I'm trying to say is we can't make it in idol. I think it's important to be healthy, and do the best that we can, but there's going to be times that we can't, and that's okay. We can't make living out this way, become an idol in our lives, and especially not become a strife point between husband and wife. I think this is something that you guys, [Aaron] Or friends, [Jennifer] can learn about together. Engage in together, and agree on together. [Aaron] That's a really good point, you know it's good to, in general, be making healthier habits in our life, but the point is not just to be healthier, it's too have a good habits. It's to walk rightly and have wisdom. And so is that thing, if those things, are getting in the way of your relationships with other people, they need to be put on the shelf. Not forever, but like you need to check yourself, and say "Am I letting this thing get in the way of them?" [Jennifer] Yeah, or if you really, truly have a heart to encourage your friends, or family members, or whoever to also, live a healthy lifestyle, be patient with them, because it might take someone else more time, than maybe it took you, or I don't know, I just feel like we need to have compassion for people's learning experience, [Aaron] Yeah, well and also don't let this, one last little warning, don't let this be the message you preach. It's good to encourage people and say "Hey like, you know, why don't you try this? "Why don't you try some more healthy things? "Here's an idea." It's one thing to share, healthy lifestyle, and to encourage someone, but if that if that replaces the message we should be preaching, the message of Christ, if like we have this opportunity and we're instead, we're encouraging someone to be healthier, and then what were thinking is, holiness comes from that. Rather than encouraging someone in Christ, and making the healthy lifestyle thing, that's an ancillary thing in our life that were like, "Oh and I like to live healthy, "and here's some ideas if you're interested." So the main messages is our life represents Christ and we preach him. 'Cause, we could do that sometimes. I got excited about crossfit, and every conversation I had was about crossfit, and I have to check myself and be like, "Hey, is this getting in the way "of the message I should be preaching right now? [Jennifer] That's really good Aaron, and I just, you know, just even thinking about this episode, it's little bit fun and quirky, and you know, not very Christ driven, but yet, I think the encouragement here is that we're aware of what we're putting in and on our bodies because, the scripture to tell us about, our bodies being the Holy Temple. [Aaron] Right, and we're, it's just being wise. Let's be wise with our bodies, and we can't control everything, and we shouldn't try and control everything. But what we can control, with moderation, with wisdom, and with sober mindedness, you know, thinking rightly, I think there's wisdom in that. And walking good, and not just putting junk in our bodies, and on our bodies. [Jennifer] And it has felt really good, I think you would agree with me, in having the conversations from time to time, about our lifestyle choices, about the things that we're doing, the things that were buying, and it's something that we evaluate often. You know, even when we go to the grocery store and so, I would hope that this episode, encourages couples to do that. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] So I also wanna let you guys know that if you, especially the wife, if you're interested in following me on Instagram, @unveiledwife, there's a highlight tab called toxic, free, healthy living, and you can get more information there. And also if you're curious about more things, if you want to hear more about, you know, the things that we use just message me. [Aaron] So before we close in prayer, I thought it'd be cool if we let everyone know some of the resources and people that we follow that kinda promote, some healthy living, so what are you share some of those? [Jennifer] So Dashing Dish, she's a good friend of ours and she is-- [Aaron] She's awesome. [Jennifer] really good at just like, meal planning, healthy fitness, [Aaron] Believer, loves the Lord. [Jennifer] everything you can think of, if you want some inspiration she's a great resource. Dr. Mark Hyman H-Y-M-A-N, is a really great resource, he just talks about the holistic living, like that Aaron mentioned. Carrie Vitt, I think it's a Vitt, or Veet. It's C-A-R-R-I-E V-I-T-T and on Instagram, that's where I follow her, and she talks a lot about thyroid health. So I mention that earlier-- [Aaron] Yeah, which is important to you. [Jennifer] Yeah, if you guys are interested in more inspiration for thyroid health, she's a great one to listen to, or watch, or follow. Follow, yeah. [Jennifer] I don't know what it's called. Another one is just.ingredients. She is going to really fun resource, a newer resource that-- [Aaron] Someone shared this with you, yeah. [Jennifer] someone shared with me, and she does like, Costco overhauls, she'll compare products and it's just been really great. [Aaron] A note on her, isn't she the one, that she'll say "If you can't do this, "at least do this?" [Jennifer] Yeah, I think so. [Aaron] And so she shows you like, if you can't afford this, the best product, here's one that's a little bit better than that other product. [Jennifer] I know she shows pictures too, of like, comparing products and things like that. So that's just.ingredients. And then another one I've been falling recently, is Purely Parsons. She's a fun one, just a mom, also nurse, who shares a lot of things, and her highlight reel, I mean, so much about birth, postpartum care, flu season, just home remedies, farming, like, anything that you can think of that you want to know more about, she's just a fun person to follow. And I really appreciated, how much time she takes in explaining things, and sharing resources. And then we had mentioned Sugar Busters, but if you want to know more about the toxi, I can't say that word, [Aaron] Toxicity. of sugar, Dr. Robert Lustig L-U-S-T-I-G [Aaron] Oh yeah, he's the guy [Jennifer] he's the guy. And especially on YouTube. Just research him and check out some of his-- [Aaron] He talks about what sugar does in our bodies. and this is not to be an anti sugar talk, we just when we're aware of how things interact with our body, how God created our bodies, it's pretty interesting 'cause it's not normal things to learn, so just wanna encourage you to check that out. So hey, we just want to thank everyone for being here today. As usual, we like to close in prayer. And so just Jennifer, why don't you pray for us? [Jennifer] Okay. Dear Lord, thank you for our bodies. We pray would be good stewards of our bodies and consider all that goes on them, and in them. We pray we would be willing to take the time and research the items we use on a daily basis. Using things that help us and not hurt us. Lord, we ask that you would give us wisdom as we navigate living a healthy lifestyle. Help us to make good choices, and be on the same page in marriage, so that we can enjoy the benefits of living toxic-free. Please help us to not be overwhelmed by the process of learning, but rather, help us to be humble and willing to learn so that we can choose what is healthy for us, and be advocates of healthy living for the sake of others. We pray living healthy would not become an idol in our lives and would not hinder any of our relationships. May we be people who don't just consume, but people who care about our bodies, and take care of them. In Jesus' name, amen. [Aaron] Amen. We love you all, We thank you for joining us on this episode. We hope it was enjoyable and educational. Go follow @unveiledwife and check out some of her, some more of her things. She posts about them often. And again, we love you, and we look forward to having you next week, possibly as long as we don't have the baby before then, we'll get some episodes up. See you next week. Did you enjoy Today Show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com. And let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.   

Join Yvette Hampton and Jennifer Elia, Founder of Sound Foundations Homeschool, as they discuss how to eliminate homeschool overwhelm, find support, and nurture a love of learning in your children. Schoolhouse Rocked Backstage Pass members have access to this full interview, which includes over an hour of content, including the video, "Nurturing a Love For Learning" and the 30 minute Bonus Video, "10 Steps to Homeschool Success."  You can get a free copy of Jennifer's program, 10 Easy Steps to Transform Your Homeschool and Home!  on the Sound Foundations Homeschool website. Jennifer Elia, homeschool consultant, blogger, and Amazon best selling author, is Founder of Sound Foundations Homeschool which is dedicated to giving homeschool moms the tools they need to thrive in their home education career. Jennifer is leading the Sound Foundations Homeschool movement, equipping moms to provide an education that celebrates her child's unique and special gifts without burning out. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children whom she has been educating at home for the past 10 years. When Jennifer isn’t busy researching the best curriculum solutions, she enjoys gardening, crafting, and writing. Watch the video of this full interview on the Schoolhouse Rocked Backstage Pass website. Connect with Jennifer Elia: You can find Jennifer on Facebook and Pinterest.  Jennifer’s website: https://soundfoundationshomeschool.com Read Jennifer’s books: ●      Sound Foundations: A manual for building a thriving and successful homeschool ●      Homeschool Moms Want You to Know ●      Making the Decision to Homeschool 30 Day Journal Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash Are you looking for a new Math Curriculum? CTCMath specializes in providing online video tutorials that take a multi-sensory approach to learning. Creative graphics and animation, synchronized with the friendly voice of internationally acclaimed teacher, Pat Murray, make learning math easy and effective. Visit CTCmath.com today to start your free trial today.  Whether you are just considering homeschooling for the first time or you are a homeschooling veteran in need of a little encouragement, the Homegrown Generation Family Expo is for you. Registration includes immediate, life-time access to over 35 hours of encouraging video and audio, and a wealth of homeschool resources. Do you believe in homeschooling? Help spread the word that homeschooling is good for students. It’s good for families. It’s good for AMERICA!  Go to SchoolhouseRocked.com/support and join the movement to spread the word about homeschooling through movie theaters nationwide. Interview transcript (this is an automated transcript. Spelling and grammar errors are guaranteed!) Speaker 1 (00:00): Hey everyone, this is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am so glad that you are with us today. It is always such an exciting thing to just know that there's someone else on the other end listening and hopefully being encouraged by this podcast and by the guests that we have on. It is my greatest desire to encourage you in your homeschool journey. Speaker 1 (01:04): Whether you have been homeschooling for a really long time or you're just thinking about homeschooling and trying to figure out what this whole home education thing is all about. And so it is always my pleasure to bring exciting guests on the podcast with me. And today is no different. I have a really great homeschool mom. She's a blogger. I'm, her name is Jennifer Elia. She is the founder of sound foundations, homeschool and she has a homeschool mom. It's been even homeschooling for how long? I'm trying to share this for our 11th year. Your 11th year. Okay. So you're in this for awhile. Yeah. So Jennifer, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. It is an absolute honor to have you on. Tell us briefly about your family and what you do. Speaker 2 (01:51): So I have four children. My oldest is 15, my youngest is almost three, so we have like the team can hot spring going on. And I was originally a public school teacher. I got my masters in teaching and so my whole thesis was based on how to teach in reach all children so that they can reach their highest potential. And I realize I'm doing that, but the school room was not the place to do it. And so that's what started my journey, looking at homeschooling with husband. And I actually started researching it before we even married. And then when my daughter got my oldest started getting close to school, we kept going back and forth and back and forth and we finally took the leap and said, we'll just do it for kindergarten and here we are 11 years later still homeschooling. Speaker 1 (02:41): That is great. I love that you were a teacher in the classroom. You also were a university or a college professor. Did you college you taught at it? Community college. Okay. Okay. And then you also, you taught, what did you tell me? French. Spanish. Speaker 2 (02:57): I taught French at the college for 12 years. And I also, when I was in public school in public school for five years I did a mixture of French and Spanish. But then I also did the math and reading resource room. So I worked with students who had special needs, which was part of what, through my my study for my masters though, like learning how to really help them. And that's, that's where I realized that these children are being labeled by what they can't do and we're in the system. We're not focusing on their great gifts and giving them the tools to really shine because they were special, just as special as the kids that were at the top of the class. They just weren't getting the opportunity to show everybody that. Speaker 1 (03:40): Yeah. Which is one of the great benefits of homeschooling is that we get to focus on the gifts that God has given to each one of our children, antichrist as well as moms because each mom is gifted in a specific way. And so we get to teach our children according to the gifts that God's given us as well. Yes, that's a blessing. So I want to talk about a few things with you today because you have a wealth of knowledge and information and experience with homeschooling. And one of the things that you talk about a lot on your blog mean that you've spoken on is homeschool, overwhelm, and just eliminating that overwhelm and moms. So let's, let's talk about that because that is something that I know every mom experiences. It does not matter how long you've been homeschooling, whether you've been homeschooling five minutes or five years or 15 years. We all get to that point where we are completely just overwhelmed because homeschooling is not just sitting down doing curriculum with our kids and a few activities and then it's done. It's life. It's everything around us. It's the academics, it's the care for our homes, it's the care for our families. It's any activities we have outside of that. And it can become very overwhelming to where it becomes almost burdensome sometimes. And I'm so, so let's talk about that. Speaker 2 (04:59): Okay. So when I was leading up to starting to homeschool I'm a researcher, so I read everything I could get my hands on about homeschooling. And I remember in one of the books I read, it said like don't make any decisions. In February it was talking all about how February is like this really hard month and you want to quit. And I kept thinking as I'm reading this, and I hadn't homeschooled yet, but I had taught for several years. Like this woman obviously just didn't have our act together. Like if she'd just planned better and then we hit our first February and it was so overwhelming and we were halfway through a year and things weren't going as I had planned, you know, wasn't the same as being in the classroom. I figured I had classroom experience, I have a master's, I have all these material, like this is gonna work. Speaker 2 (05:46): And the longer I went into it, the more I realized that it's not about school. Like it's not school at home. Right. It really is a lifestyle. And trying to, the school within your life and within your home was just completely overwhelming because while you're doing math, there's still laundry piling up and there's dishes and there's phone calls and there's dust bunnies and you know, you need to try to find a way to balance all of that. And I was trying to just, you know, this is school and when school is over, then I'll be, you know, like the housewife. And the mom and whatever and it just wasn't working. So I realized very quickly that I needed to find a way to make this work. And I've realized that one of the problems is that we've all grown up with this school mentality. Speaker 2 (06:35): Like that's what we know. We know going to school, we know sitting in a desk, Mmm. We know like going through marking periods and having homework and then when we come home, all of us want to escape the school in some way, but we don't know how to do it. Like we don't know how to have our children at home because in society they've always gotten on that bus. Well they haven't always, but like in our recollection in, in our, you know, what our family has passed on to us, that's what's happened. And so we need the kind of step back and reorganize our priorities and learn how to live together and learn while we're living. Or it does get completely overwhelming because the laundry and the dishes, no matter how organized and I've tried, like every system there is no matter how organized you are, it's going to be there. Speaker 2 (07:24): And the fact of the matter is that you have children in your house like living and working and playing there all day long. It's never going to look like better homes and gardens. And I think that that is one thing that people get caught up in because I know before it was a blogger, I loved reading blogs and that's how I got into it. And often on blogs we put the, this fantastical version of our life out there. And so then you think, well, I need to do it like her and I need, you know, if I could just buy this curriculum get this schedule, you know, whatever it is, pray this many times a day, then, then my life all fall into place. And what I know now, like being on the other side of the blogosphere is that most of that is marketing. There are some people that are extremely put together and they ha they manage to keep their house beautiful all the time. But the reality is the bed is very stressful. And so eliminating overwhelm is really accepting like your own humanly limitations and relying on grace on that. What you're giving your children is enough. And if your house isn't perfect, it's okay because you really need to weigh what your priorities are within your family, within your homeschool that you can't do everything. You just need to find a balance. Speaker 1 (08:47): Yeah. Let's take a really quick break and then we will come back cause I want to talk a little bit more about this. The home grown generation expo is here. You'll be encouraged by Kirk Cameron, Heidi st John, Sam Sorbo, Andrew Patois, ginger Hubbard, Lee borns, and many others. You can still register and have lifetime access to the replays of the entire event. Don't miss out on this exciting expo. Register today for only 20 dollars@homegrowngeneration.com. That's homegrown generation.com. Speaker 3 (09:24): Hey guys, this is Brooklyn Hampton, daughter of the host of the schoolhouse rock podcast. Do you love this show than stop listening. That's right. Pause the show right now and go leave a review on iTunes or in your favorite podcast app. Let others know how much you love it. Don't worry. I'll wait. Did you do it? Great. Now back to the show. Speaker 1 (09:46): We're talking about how to avoid homeschool overwhelm, and before the break we discussed how sometimes we expect things to look a certain way, but it can never really look that way because that's not reality. And you know, we, I think we have this idea that we need to look like this. Pinterest, perfect homeschool mom, because we see it on Pinterest recently on Facebook. We see it on all the blogs and it looks like all these other, these other moms have it together. And then we start to feel guilty and feel poorly about ourselves because we think, well, why don't I have it together? What's wrong with me? Why can't I get my act together? Yeah. And I think oftentimes that guilt causes more overwhelm in our minds because then we're, we're trying to do even more so that we can, we can be these other be like these other perfect homeschool moms. Speaker 1 (10:36): And as you mentioned before, that's just not a reality. We can't, we can never do that. And I forget who I was talking to. It was some time a while back and it was a homeschool dad actually, and he said, I've realized that I will never, as long as my children are home being homeschooled, I will never have the perfect clean house and have a perfect my, my children, perfectly educated and, and have it all because you cannot have it all. It's not possible. It's still, so then because we come in with this idea that we're bringing kind of the traditional school as we know it into our home, get overwhelmed because it's not working. And then we just at times feel like just throwing up our hands and saying, okay, this, I'm done. I can't do this homeschool thing. Clearly I'm not good at it. That is never where we want moms to be. You know, we exist as a ministry schoolhouse rock to encourage moms and say, you, you've got this, you can do this. You can do it through the strength and the power of the Holy spirit. And he's gonna he's gonna fill in all of the gaps, but give some very practical advice to moms who are feeling really overwhelmed and they're just feeling like, I, I just can't do this another day. Everything's a mess. My life is chaos. How in the world do they move forward? Speaker 2 (11:58): Well, I first want to start with news, mentioned the gaps. And I think that that is something that we get caught up in because when I started homeschooling, like I wanted to do cover everything. I wanted to give my kids the best education ever and there was not going to be a single gap anywhere. And what I realized after years is that every education has gaps. I mean, you could spend $150,000 a year for the best prep school there is when your child will still have gaps in their education. So, as a homeschool mom, we need to not fall into that trap of feeling like if we don't teach them everything, then we will have, then we'll fail. You know, because learning is a lifelong process and what we need to really do is give them the roots and the love of learning so that they can become lifelong learners and become well educated as a matter of practice, not just when they're in school. Speaker 2 (12:55): So I think that's the first place to start because I know that when I started kindergarten, like I was trying to teach her everything there was to ever teach, you know, and at one point I had like 12 different subjects on the roster and now that we're coming towards the end and she's, you know, probably about a year or two away from finishing because she's just rapidly wants to get through it. I realized that there's no way that I could have taught her everything. And every once in a while I think, Oh, there was this and there was that and I realized all I can do is give her that foundation, like that sound foundation, which is where I came up with the name and the wings and you know, set her free and know that I did the best that I possibly could. Was it perfect? No. Could I have done something better? Yes. But at the end of the day, I did everything I possibly could and I gave it my all. And I just let God do the rest. So I think that's a first place to start to eliminate overwhelm. Speaker 1 (13:54): Yeah. Let me say something on that really quickly too, is I feel like if we push our kids so hard because we feel like we have an agenda that has to be met, we've got all these boxes that we need to check off. Oftentimes what I've seen happen is that it really puts us, puts a strain on our relationship with our children because then it becomes so much about the academics and checking off the boxes instead of building that relationship with our kids. And like you said, and we're actually going to talk about this in the next episode, is nurturing a love of learning and teaching our kids how to learn. And so I, I think building that relationship with them is so much more important than the academics because when you have that, then they're going to be more willing to learn anyway. You know, I hear about moms who their kids are kicking and screaming and throwing tantrums and they're like, you know, they don't want to learn. Speaker 1 (14:46): They don't want to do anything with school. And oftentimes I'm like, just take a step back, drop for a little while. And by school, I mean the academic part of it, but drop the academics for a little while, build that relationship with your kids and then slowly bring it back in. You don't have to do everything at once. I mean, you said no, you, you know, you had a list of 12 different things you had to do and you realized that there's just no way that's going to work. But building those relationships with our kids and then slowly bringing in the other things that you want them to learn and teach them how to love learning those things. Speaker 2 (15:22): Yes. Yes. And I was, when I was caught in a very bad season of overwhelm and struggle with my homeschool, I went to a homeschool conference and Andrew kudo, I happened to be there, go. I didn't really even know who he was before I went there and I went to all of his conferences and at the end I got to actually speak to him and I kind of poured my heart out and he's like, it's okay. Like you're doing okay. I'm like, but she's not. He's like, it'll come. It's like, just keep reading and you know, it'll be okay. And he said, and one thing that he said in one of his conferences that I kind of live by is when nothing is working, just read good books. And so that's one of the, you know, like that's really what it comes to him. And that's where learning comes from, right, is books, not textbooks and workbooks and tests. Speaker 2 (16:08): So if it's all holding apart and you're overwhelmed, just find a good pile of book and your kids will be learning. Even if it's not on your schedule, even if it's not like something you can check off on the curriculum, they're learning and it gives you a chance to decompress. So we have regular reading week built into a year when everybody just read. And so if they're behind on their academic reading, then they read that for the week. But otherwise they just find something to read and it gives me a chance to kind of catch my breath in between trimesters, but it also lets them just chase their own interests and not just be stuck in a list of what they have to read. Speaker 1 (16:47): Right, right. Yeah, totally. I love, love good books. And there's there are few better ways to build relationships with our kids than just sitting down with them and just reading a really good book with them. So the other thing that I know you're passionate about and I have found to be very, very important in homeschooling, especially when we're feeling overwhelmed, is finding support. And I always, it's so funny cause when I think about finding support, you know, oftentimes people, especially kind of that millennial crowd will think, well, I'll just go on Facebook and I'm going to find people there to help support me. And there are a lot of great resources on Facebook and there are a lot of really well meaning people and a lot of really wise people on there who, you know, oftentimes I'll read comments, questions and comments and I'll think, yes, you're right on. And then other times people will put questions on there and there will be answers. And I'm like, no, you are so you, no, no, no, don't do it that way. And so there's that social media and of it, but then there's also of course, local support that people need. So how have you found ways to find good support in your homeschooling and then how do you suggest other people to do that as well? Speaker 2 (18:00): It took me a long time to find that because I really had to get out of the school mentality and out of the circles that were connected to the school I came from a long line of public school teachers, so everybody that I knew was somehow, you know, connected the school. And then when my mom friends, like all their kids went to school, I just lost that whole safety net. So there are more homeschoolers out there than anybody realizes. And I realize that some people live in very rural areas, but I guarantee you there's somebody who's homeschooling there. And I wish I had known that from the beginning that I hadn't just pinned, falling, like blog all across the country because I never realized we lived on a little Lake and there were actually three other homeschool families that lived on that Lake. Speaker 2 (18:44): And it took me years to find out that they even existed. Wow. So now with social media, it's easier to find them though, I feel. So if you'd go on Facebook and you put in like your local town or your state and homeschoolers, something will show up. And we are tapped into a very wonderful group of homeschoolers that I actually found randomly to a blog that I followed. There was a spinoff local Facebook group of people who followed it and I actually connect, most of them were homeschoolers. It turned out and I kept it with them and that's how we got involved with them. And it's amazing resource because even though we're spread out pretty far, I mean I'm on the Northern reaches of it. Some people are up to like two hours South or West of here. And we try to meet in central locations. Speaker 2 (19:32): It really is wonderful cause our kids have that support and I know that they understand me and they speak the same language. Because I think that's a big thing when you start homeschooling and people don't understand it. It's hard to get that support and you don't want people to know they are struggling because you don't want them to say, well see, I told you it never works. Or obviously you just can't do this because that's already in the back of your mind. Like, I'm not qualified. I can't do this. I'm never going to succeed because of the fear. And you need to shut that out. Like don't let the devil get your year because you know that's not the truth, but it's already there. And the only, the last thing you need is for someone to actually say it to you and then it makes it like it's real. Speaker 1 (20:15): Right, right. Yeah. Finding that support is so, so important and people who will will really encourage you and your walk you know, just finding those like-minded families who will say, let's do this together. Yes. So we are out of time for this podcast, but will you come back again? Yeah, let's, let's do a part two because I actually want to talk with you more about nurturing that love of learning in our kids. And then we have a few other things that you have some ways to transform your home and homeschool suggestions on that as well. So, okay, so let's come next time we will talk more about that. Thank you guys for listening today. Jennifer, where can people find out more about you? If you go to the SoundFoundationsHomeschool.com or you can find me on Pinterest and Facebook at Sound Foundations Homeschool. Okay, great. And we'll put all of those links, of course, in the show notes that people can find them there. So thank you guys. Have a fantastic day and we will see you back here next time. Bye.  

Cindy (00:00): Welcome to Exploring the Seasons of Life a podcast for women that explores life's beginnings, endings and messy bits in-between. I'm your host, Cindy MacMillan and today we're talking about wholeness and anxiety with Jennifer Kremer. Jennifer is a wife, mom to four (twin boys – Ellis and Jack, Stella and Carter), NASA Engineer and a life and mommy coach focusing on empowering you to be your most alive self. Jennifer is the CEO of AliveCoachingLLC.com. Jennifer, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. Jennifer  (00:32): Thanks for having me. I'm super excited. It's my first podcast ever. Cindy (00:36): Well thank you. You wrote something on Facebook and it really stuck with me and I just want to read it and I want to get your thoughts on this. You wrote this on January 16th - "Over the past few months I’ve been working on holding myself more dearly and giving myself grace. Us over achievers tend to take on the world. We strive to accomplish and finish. As I work in raising my awareness about myself I’ve encountered so many other people who share the same journey. Men and women. Moms and non-moms. We are all human. We are all normal. We are all doing our best. And if you need to hear this today, you are enough. Exactly as is. You are exactly where you are supposed to be. You are loved. If you are having worries, anxiety and fears, share it with someone you hold dear. Release and evolve to open the your world to more positive energy and enable yourself to release. And if you’re like me, a good yell or crying session is always amazing at releasing and moving toward greatness." When I read that, it really, it really struck home for me, especially about being where you are and that we're all on the same journey. Is there something that was going on when you wrote that or is that just like a message to other people? Jennifer  (01:57): No, I mean honestly the things that I post and the things that I write are usually inspired because of either something I'm going through or something somebody close to me or a client or something. And at that point, actually, so I'm being coached as well. So I'm a coach and I feel like the number one thing that people should have in their life is a coach themselves. I had a coach and we had a session together. We've been working together now for about a year and we had a session and I was just like, it was, it was a lot, a lot of it is around, at that time was around me feeling like, you know, I want all these things. And I think there's so many people that feel the same thing. They want to do their job, they want to have their kids, they want to be the best mom, the best dad, the best, you know, person at work. Jennifer  (02:41): They want to have, start their own business. They want to have investments. There's all these things that a lot of highly ambitious people want to do. At times I started feeling like, and I was telling my coach, here's all the things I did and then I started going into, but I didn't do this, this and this. And, and she said, why? Why are you enough? You just told me 15 things that were amazing that you did, but because your kids got sick and you weren't able to do another 15 or whatever that number was it, then you're a failure now. And I started, I got so upset and I started crying and I was just like, she's like, where in your life are you? Why do you feel like you're not enough? Where does that show up for you? Jennifer  (03:19): Where did that, where's that coming from? And we really started to explore that. And at that post I was just like, you know, enough is enough. Like I, everything I'm doing is good enough. And every one of my clients have some, or people in our life have some amount of, they don't feel good enough, I think as Americans and you know, we have all these opportunities but, but sometimes all those opportunities get overwhelming if you're trying to accomplish so much. And you know, just being happy that yeah, I had to take a week off work and I didn't do a whole lot, but I took care of my kids and they are healthy now is okay. Or the weeks that I do do a lot of celebrate that and be happy with that. And there's so many people I feel like that just get bummed out and burdened that they had a hundred things on their to do list. So they didn't do all a hundred but they did 99 and why is that? Why are you not good enough? Just the way you are. Cindy (04:11): And that's one of the reasons that it hit me is because I think about overachievers and I consider myself one of those as well that you know, we can go through that exactly what you're talking about. We do so much and we don't hit that hundred things so to speak and we do feel like we're not enough. So we're just going through this almost like the cycle of go, go, go burnout, exhaustion, go, go, go. Burnout. Exhaustion. Jennifer  (04:37): Yeah. And then, and for me, and I think for so many people, it's not, it's not your present that tells you that you're not good enough. It's not your present that tells you, Oh well you're just not good enough. Because you didn't do all these things. It's usually something in your past. It's usually the way you grew up or something that happened in your life at some point that is telling you if you don't do all these things. Like for me it's, it's, I grew up in a very strict household and I grew up, that A's were the only thing acceptable that I had to be in every club and everything because my mom wanted the best for me. And while that seems good, that gave me some, some fears of if I'm not getting praise or I'm not doing well enough that I'm not good enough. Jennifer  (05:19): And I know that that was not her intent at all. But you know, having achieved so much, I just feel like there's more, there's more, there's more. And it's usually something in your past that's, that's kind of holding you back and you really need to let go of or explore it or, or just be okay to scream about it or yell about it and get those, that energy out. Because so much of it is just the energy that we carry around. And as soon as you just, it's like a instant pot. As soon as you let the little valve release just a little, little bit, it opens you up to then do more. Cindy (05:52): I love that analogy. One of the questions that I'm going to ask everybody on this podcast is What does "Exploring the Seasons of Life" mean to you and what season of life are you in right now? Jennifer  (05:58): So I was thinking about that question because I thought since this is called Seasons of Life, you're going to ask me that when I was like, what season am I in? I don't know. And I was talking to some men actually yesterday about this. I met with some guys that do social media and I was talking to them about this and, and in my mind I was like, Oh, they're not going to understand what I'm saying. But they really did. And this season of my life that I'm in is that I'm not just a mom and I'm not sure if that makes sense to anybody. Cindy (06:32): It makes perfect sense. Jennifer  (06:33): But we were talking and I was saying how I read, you know, Facebook knows your mom because if you post anything about your kids or whatever, suddenly like knows you and who you are and it starts giving you all these articles. Jennifer  (06:45): And there was this article that I read about a mom who was kind of saying like, she's doing it all and you know, moms tend to think, Oh, I know every single thing that has to get done and I'm responsible for doing it. I told them that I was just like, I'm not accepting that. I think that's bullshit. Like the fact that we take it all on and then get pigeonholed into I'm just a mom and then feel comfortable enough to put out all these articles saying how I do it all and I have to do it all and I don't, the season of my life that I'm in is that I'm whole being myself. And so doing the things that fill me up energy-wise, whether it be my business that I'm passionate about, or working out or spending time with my husband or doing my job or being with teams are the things that give me energy is the season of my life that I'm in is that I'm just whole being me and I'm better to everyone else for that. Jennifer  (07:39): And so I think so many times moms are like, Oh, I'm in. I like my first thought obviously it was like, Oh, I'm in the season in my life that I have little kids and you know, trying to just balance it all. And I don't think that's true at all. I don't think there's such thing as balance. If you're trying to balance stuff, you're failing at something and then you get bummed about failing about it and it sucks and you feel crappy if you're not like just going out and doing the things that make you feel whole as an individual, as a person, you're no good to anyone else. So trying to be everybody's end all be all is just gonna make you drained and yeah, you can do it for awhile and I think a lot of moms do and, and then you wake up 5 or 10 years, you're like, what am I doing? Jennifer  (08:19): Who am I? Who am I in my marriage? Who's my husband; you know, what do I want for my life? And I don't, the season in my life is, I don't want to lose myself. I want to be whole for where I'm at. Cindy (08:30): Thank you. I have gotten, every person I've asked has got a different view and a different way of looking at that. So that's why I'm asking that question is to really put that out there for people to think about. You know, a season may not be, like you said, just a mom, an employee, or having your own business. It's being who you are. Jennifer  (08:51): And I think sometimes people don't know who that is and sometimes that takes some work to figure out what does that even mean? The number one thing I hear from so many clients and so many people is I don't know what I'm passionate about. Jennifer  (09:03): Then you need to spend some time figuring that out because, and it might, it's not going to take a day. I think everybody's looking for a quick like, what job am I going to have? What career am I going to have? Oh, I love doing this. And they think it's just a quick thing and it took me about a year to really get to this point of with coaching of, you know what? Who am I? What? What is good enough? What, who do I want to be? Who do I want to show up as in being good with that and knowing what, what does make me whole? And it's not something that you just figure out overnight. I think everybody's looking for that quick answer and it's work. Cindy (09:33): Jennifer how did you, um, get your clients to start thinking about that? I mean, do you have certain questions that you ask them? Do you have, are there certain exercises? Because I agree with you, I mean everyone seems to be looking at what is their purpose, what are they put here to do? What are they passionate about? And as I'm saying that, I'm also thinking that can be different things at different seasons in your life. Jennifer  (09:59): Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean coaching is definitely an experience and it's a journey. And I think even when I started coaching or started having a coach, I've had three coaches so far in my life. And every time I expect one thing and where it takes us is a total nother thing. And because it's just a powerful conversation about and asking questions and really digging deep and also opening up that side of your brain that's more creative, right? Like I could ask you what's season of your life you're in. Any might be more objective and think more logically. But until I ask you some questions like, you know, why do you, you know, Jen and why do you feel like you're not good enough? Where is that coming from? Until you really explore that side of your brain that makes you go, huh. And I think a lot of my clients, when we, when we talk, they're like, man, that's a good question. Jennifer  (10:41): I've never thought about that. I've never like where does that come from? I had a good childhood. Why? And then, and then I, after a while or whatever the thing is, or they're just trying to achieve a goal and something's holding them back or whatever. But I think until you open that side of your brain that makes you go, huh, what? What is, what? Where is that coming? Or why can't I seem to finish this book? Why can't I seem to get a new job? Why can't I seem to make my marriage work? Why can't I make my relationships work with family members? Like there's, there's so much that needs to be talked about in them in the more you share, the less pain you feel. And it doesn't have to be like a recent pain or an actual pain. The more you share, the more you're able to get that out and move on and think through it. Jennifer  (11:23): I had this coach and we had this coaching session one time and it was only for 10 minutes and the girl was asking me questions and I was just like talking and babbling and babbling and babbling. But I was in this zone of thinking and she just let me talk and talk and talk. And then I solved my own problem and I've had this problem for a year and she was just asking me a couple of powerful questions. And then I was just like, you know, and I think it's this, but you know what, no, I don't. I think it's this or this, this and then this. And then I was like, Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need to do. And it opened that side of your brain that you to really tap into that inner energy and that inner, you know, creativity and, and emotional side of, of where stuff's coming from. Cindy (12:01): I mean, whenever you talk to a coach, and I also have my own coaches, I do the same thing. I'm talking and I'm going on and on with myself and then it comes to me, Oh, I know the answer. I just figured it out. Jennifer  (12:14): Because everybody already has the power. Like that's, that's the beautiful thing about coaching is that if someone needs a coach, they usually think, you know, I should be able to figure this out. But everybody already has the power within themselves is just unlocking that. And what does that look like and how do you, you know, move on from, from things or how do you open up your mind to really be able to do that thing hand to be held a little bit accountable for, for doing the things that you say you want to do. Cindy (12:38): Do you think being held accountable is one of the biggest pieces of coaching, other than the powerful questions just happen that having someone else other than a friend or family member, be able to say, you told me you were going to do X, Y, Z, but not beat you up over it necessarily. Jennifer  (12:58): Yeah, I mean, accountability is definitely a part, but I always ask people, how would they like to be held accountable? Because maybe it's not me, you know, maybe it's their husband, maybe it's themselves. You know, some people are good about being, you know, holding themselves accountable. Maybe it's just, you know, I'm gonna do this when I accomplish this, and then we check in and they did it right. You know, like it doesn't always have to be me. And honestly, I don't hold people accountable. I'm not doing the work for you. You know, that this isn't a powerful experience to be coached if someone's just going to do it for you. So if the client is like, Oh, well, text me, when are you texting me? Tuesday asked me if I did it. No, you can say if you would like to text me because that is easy for you. Jennifer  (13:37): A lot of people will be like, Oh, I want to work out. So they'll text me when they finished their workout and I'll, you know, we'll celebrate together and that's cool, but I'm not doing the work for you because if I did the work for you, this wouldn't be an experience that you're really truly going to benefit from. Cindy (13:48): That's very true, Jennifer, and I just want to kind of move over into another subject right now and that's anxiety. I know when you and I first talked, we were talking a little bit about anxiety and how that shows up. Can you just talk a little bit about anxiety? Cindy (14:07): I think myself and anyone who has anxiety feels like they're an expert on it because if you have it, you feel like you're the only one that knows about it and you're the only one that knows what yours feels like. Jennifer  (14:15): And I, and that's true, but I've had, I had anxiety, I'm pretty sure my whole life and didn't even know it. I was when I was 24 I had a coach through a leadership program from work and I remember sitting in this room, I remember exactly where I was and she said to me after we, after we'd already had some sessions, she said, do you know you have anxiety? And I was like, I don't, I don't even know what that is. I didn't grow up in an environment that anyone ever talked, like use that word. And I guess maybe it was my age. They didn't we, it wasn't just a word that I grew up hearing. Nowadays we grow up hearing that word and I was like, what are you talking about? She's like, you hold your breath. And I was like, I do hold my, when I get nervous and I'm anxious, I hold my breath and I don't breathe. Jennifer  (14:58): And breathing is so important to releasing energy and emotion from your body. And I was just like, she blew my mind. I couldn't undo the fact that she said I had anxiety. And then I started putting a word to the feeling that I had felt for 20 years and didn't know. And that started me breaking down to the point where I went to a counselor to a therapist and started working with her. And why do I have this? Because you know, the obvious solution is, okay, well there's medicines out there and if you need that, like absolutely, you know, work with your doctor and your counselor to do that. But I didn't want that to be the answer or I didn't want that to be the end all be all. I didn't want it to be, well some medicine will just fix me because obviously there was some deeper stuff going on. Jennifer  (15:46): And so after doing that, it definitely gave me tools and things to help me. But I still experience it and I know that. And as soon as I told other friends I have anxiety and I'm thinking like I have this disease that nobody else has, every single friend was like, Oh my gosh, I'm on medicine for anxiety. Or, Oh my gosh, I have anxiety too and it's so bad and it keeps me from functioning and or keeps me from doing these things I want to do. And I was just like, wow, it's amazing how many people experience it and I've learned over time that I, I really just don't want to take medicine. I think some people have to, but it's something that is a constant thing that I think I have to work at. And I recently had a coach, my counselor has said to me, you were wired like that when you were less than five through the experiences that you went through as a child. Jennifer  (16:30): You were wired that way. And my coach was like, that is total BS. I don't buy it. She's like, there's so much research out there that shows that psychologically we can break those, those, you know, neurons and we can break that pattern in our brain. And she's like, if you don't believe that and you need to start there because you need to change the pattern of the way you feel so that you get a different result. And even as simple as wearing a hair tie on one arm and when I'm feeling anxious, moving it to the other arm breaks that pattern, that thought process instantly. Like something is so simple and I know that people are probably like, Oh my gosh, move your hair tie is not going to help me. I have so much anxiety for all these reasons. But it's one tiny step in getting educated and doing the things to try to create a different result than what you're experiencing. Cindy (17:17): And sometimes it is just those very simple steps, like you said, to kind of bring awareness and break those patterns. Jennifer  (17:25): Yeah, and it doesn't mean you're going to get it. It doesn't mean you're not going to get triggered. It does not mean that you're not going to feel anxious. But my goal is to be anxious less. And so if I, you know, my normal go to is something triggers me. I start feeling anxious, I start spiraling, I start thinking of everything I should have said could have done, they should have said, and now I'm making stories in my own head of exactly how something happened. That's not even real. And then a week goes by and I'm still reeling over this anxious feeling. So my goal is if I can have an experience, it is anxious or scary or whatever, that I'm at least I jump out of it faster, you know, I don't want to be anxious for a week. If I'm anxious for a day or a couple hours, I can, you know, that's just one step in me being better as a whole. Cindy (18:10): Are there any other things that you do yourself for anxiety. I know the hair ties, moving, that breathing talked about breathing. Jennifer  (18:20): So there's a bunch of things that I try because I think that it doesn't hurt to try them all. I do meditation, I listen to Sarah Blondin, her podcasts and just taking 10 minutes. And I've realized that the whole model of getting up early and taking a half an hour to, you know, read or be mindful isn't what serves me because when I get anxious it's usually at work or it's usually like when the kids are screaming or it's usually you know, an issue with someone or whatever. So when I'm feeling that way, I try to find a 10 minute block to just say, I'm going to go in my office and shut the door. I'm going to go, you know, at home at the end of the night and shut the door and listen to that for 10 minutes and break that pattern. Jennifer  (19:01): Because for me it's about breaking the pattern. It's not about, it's not so much about being mindful at a certain time in the morning just for my overall benefit. It's, it's kind of just breaking that pattern and saying, Nope, stopping. I'm not going to go talk, not going to go talk to somebody and get them on my side. You know, how you like talk to your girlfriends or talk to someone at work and they're totally co-signing everything you're saying. And it just makes you more amped up. It's like no, break that pattern, do something different that puts you in a different headspace to hopefully get out of it just a little bit quicker; is my personal goal to, you know, move out of that energy level cause it's easy to go down and the next thing you know you're a victim and you feel like stuff's being done to you and you're sad and it's easy to stay there if you don't do something different to jump out of it. Cindy (19:43): Yeah. And it's easy in that once you're in that place of being a victim and when I say easy, I mean, you know, when you're in that place of being a victim, you almost can't see what's happening. That is this truth. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like everything is kind of, it's spiraled so much that it's no longer that little nugget of what really happened. Jennifer  (20:03): It's human nature. I mean that's normal to start making up stories and, and, or to their thinking about what you wish you in said and that situation or how you wish it would play out. That's normal. But to feel that way. I think we all do that at some point, but, and it makes all the sense in the world. But I don't want to live there, you know? And, and I don't think, I think being a victim sometimes serves you. Yes, you got upset. It felt crappy. Go ahead. You want to cry about it or feel sad or you'll feel a victim for, but yeah, maybe your soul needs that for a minute, but you don't want to live there. You know, nobody wants to live there forever. Feeling like things are being done to them or you know, I can't end even deeper things, you know, their families or things that happened to them that were super traumatic. Jennifer  (20:43): I mean, that stuff does cause anxiety and depression and, and until can either, you know, work with someone to heal from it or figure out tools to not live there. You know, energetically if you live in that level one place of I'm a victim or things are being done to me and I know I felt that way sometimes about you know, things in my past that it just is what it is. Then you kind of go back there more often because you think that's just is what it is, was create a new story, create a new story that instead of making up the stories that are horrible that are like, Oh well this is what I should've said. How about making up a story that actually is good? You know, maybe that person was just, you know, having a bad day or maybe my family did the best they could with what they were able to do and it's really freeing when you can create a new story that serves you in a better way. Cindy (21:32): Thank you. Yes. If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell her about the season of life you're in now? Or even if it isn't about the season of life you're in now, what advice would you give your 18 year old self? Jennifer  (21:47): Oh my gosh, that's a crazy question. Wow. Now you're opening up my, my brain to think about that. I think where I'm at now, I would tell her that you're going to do great things. You're going to be great, you're going to be great. You know, mom and wife and just go with the flow and enjoy and you know, being ambitious is great, but to really take the time to learn yourself and learn who you want to be and create that and not let it be, you know, created for you because of, you know, what we think we need to do. You know, when you're 18 you're like, all right, now I need to go to college. Now I need to graduate. Now I need to find love in my life. Cause that happens instantly apparently. And then I need to get married and then I need to have kids. Jennifer  (22:32): And then, and life just doesn't work out the way you think that there's this, I remember having this little timeline for when I was going to be an astronaut on it, so I had a whole timeline and I don't even want to be an astronaut anymore. You know, it's like I want to be different things now. So it's like, it's okay to, you know, learn and grow and mess up and have horrible experiences because there's going to be really good ones too. And just to really, you know, stop and enjoy that and, and you know, kind of let life take you wherever without fear of, Oh my gosh, I met, I failed this one class in college and now I'm never going to graduate. And you know, it didn't work out with this guy. And so now I'm not gonna, you know, there's this, all these things, it's like, you know, it all happened for a reason and I'll happen to be exactly where I am right now Cindy (23:16): At the perfect spot right now. So Jennifer how can people follow you on your journey? Jennifer  (23:24): I have a website and it's called AliveCoachingLLC.com. But I'm also on Instagram, Alive Coaching, LLC on Facebook. I'm starting on TikTok. Um, this is everybody. Sounds like time, but, um, yeah, follow me. I'm going to start giving tips, on social media and I do lot of videos just with the things that I'm thinking about that I feel like would be helpful, to other people. co-parenting and you know, just everything under the sun and it's usually stuff that's affecting me because I'm human, like everyone else. So I'm hoping that it serves other people and, and giving them a different perspective and a different outlook on, on kind of what they're going through now. Cindy (24:07): And are you still doing Facebook lives? Cindy (24:10): Uh, so yeah, I'm going to start doing more videos and then doing some live sessions on Facebook and Instagram so that people can ask questions or comment in on, you know, what their thoughts or questions are and around coaching. And I also do, um, complimentary sessions for people as well. So if anyone's interested in that, I offer a complimentary session, um, for you to experience what coaches like and really have that powerful conversation experience to see if that would help you kind of unlock and evolve into your next self and your heart, achieve your goals. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for being here. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you. This was great. It's my first one. Yay. Cindy (24:51): Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Exploring the Seasons of Life. I really enjoyed my conversation with Jennifer and I especially liked it when she said; “I am whole being myself.” . Cindy (25:02): To be honest, it’s been a messy week for me, and I have felt out of alignment so when I sat down to edit the podcast, I found some comfort around our talk about wholeness. For me wholeness is loving the parts of ourselves that we would rather not; accepting our perfectly imperfect self; and gratitude for simply being. Please make sure to visit our website, CynthiaMacMillan.com while you're at it, if you found value in this show, I would appreciate you simply telling a friend about the show that will help us out until next time. Live inspired.  

FREE DOWNLOADSDatenightconversations.comMarriageprayerchallenge.comparentingprayerchallenge.com “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” - Ephesians 4:1 How do I become more selfless in my marriage?What are some Tips for consistency in communication within marriage to build intimacy?How do we live for God together...my husband never really been to church Etc?How do you work through disagreements on hobbies? IE motorcycles?How do you keep chasing dreams God's call you to, when your spouse is in a totally negative place?Do you still struggle with trusting your husband? Speaking about p 0rn and how can you battle thoughts?What is your number one advice to couples struggling?READ TRANSCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today, we're gonna answer some questions from the community about not seeing eye-to-eye in marriage. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life-- Love-- And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God-- Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Aaron] Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Marriage After God podcast. This is gonna be a Q&A episode where we polled our community and we got a buncha questions about a specific topic, which is not seeing eye-to-eye, and we're gonna answer those in a bit. But first, before we get into that, Jennifer, is there anything new going on in your life? Is there anything you wanna chat with me about? [Jennifer] I love chatting with you. Something that I wanted to share, that's been on my heart for our listeners, is just something that I been doing intentionally with a girlfriend of mine and that is discipleship and it's going really well, we meet bi-weekly. And the reason that I wanted to bring it up is because I think so often we can go about our days and our times and our schedules and just focus on what is at hand and what we need to do and sometimes we forget about discipleship or mentorship or how we impact other peoples' lives. And I just think it's really important for us to consider, you know, who's that older, more mature Christian in our life that we can glean from? So, someone we can be spending time with that will fill us up that will maybe speak truth into our life or see something that isn't going the way it should be and call it out in us or maybe we can go to them for a question. And then, who's that person who is younger than you that you can reach out to and have an impact in their life? You know, be that person for them. Toward God. Yeah. Encouraging them. Yeah. So, I just, I'm bringing it up because it's been going so well in my personal life that I just thought, "Man, if they're not thinking about this, "I want them to be thinking about this." [Aaron] Well, and it's a, we've talked about this in past episodes, about the necessity of community and walking with each other and our ministries in other people's lives. Yeah. [Aaron] Just the importance of we're not autonomous creatures, we're part of a body, and God's given us gifts that must be used to glorify Him and to mutually build up the Church and to encourage each other and to bless each other, so. [Jennifer] And sometimes our flesh can get in the way, you know, those insecurities where we go, "Oh, it'd be really nice to spend time with that person." But then we answer for them, right? We go, "Oh, they're too busy." Or, "They can't." Or, "I don't know"-- You're really good at this, aren't you? "I don't know what to say." Answering for people. Answering for people, yeah. And you've drawn me out of this. But my encouragement to that person is don't answer for that person but surrender to God, pray about your desire to build that relationship up, and then have the courage to just ask. And if they say, "I can't at this time," receive it and say, "Okay," and pray about, maybe, who else you can engage with in that way. But chances are, they're gonna be thrilled to hear from you. [Aaron] Yeah, I've been through something very similar. Not necessarily, I don't have a scheduled meeting with a single person each week or every other week, but I've been trying to intentionally meet regularly with all the men from our fellowship. Mainly to get to know them more, to get into deeper relationship with them, to be encouraged by them. But also to, yeah, disciple. And we're called to make disciples, we're called to walk with each other and sharpen each other, as iron sharpens iron. If we're not doing that and we're just kind of going about our day and, yeah, we see 'em at church on Sundays and then we leave and we have dinners every once in awhile, but if there's no intentional, like, "'Kay, I actually want to be in this person's life, "lifting them up to the Father, "and I want someone in my life doing that for me," we're kind of missing out on a huge part of what it means to be a believer, so. That's a great encouragement for everyone listening. Yeah. So, before we get into the questions, we wanna tell everyone about our free things that we have to offer you guys. We've made a bunch of resources now that I feel like they keep compiling, like, we're making more and more. 'Cause we get an idea and then we're like, "Okay, "let's make it and let's give it to everyone," so. [Jennifer] And I gotta admit, I'm the one that pushes for the new ones because I want you guys who have already been through, maybe, some of the ones that we've been offering to jump into the new one, which, the newest one we just launched is the Parenting Prayer Challenge, which, oh my gosh, I'm so excited about. [Aaron] Yeah, it's a totally free email challenge and essentially, we send you an email every day for 31 days giving you a prayer prompt for a specific area of your child's life, either your son or your daughter, and it's a reminder every day. [Jennifer] And it doesn't matter what age your kids are because it could be for your infant all the way up to your adult-- Your kids that are out of the house. Children, yeah. [Aaron] And you can get that at parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word. It's totally free, you should go sign up today if you haven't. And just a quick note on the other ones, we have a free download called Date Night Conversations. It's a list of 52 conversation starters. You can get that at datenightconversations.com, one word. And then the last one is Marriage Prayer Challenge. It's similar to the Parenting Prayer Challenge, but it's for your marriage. Prayer's best. [Aaron] Yeah, you can sign up to pray for your wife or you can sign up to pray for your husband and we send you a prompt every day for 31 days. So, get those, those are completely free. [Jennifer] All right, so we are moving on to today's topic, which, we're doing a Q&A. We already polled the community from social media. We usually do this on Instagram, so if you're not already following, be sure to follow @marriageaftergod. You can also follow me @unveiledwife for some more wife encouragement and then @husbandrevolution for more husband stuff. [Aaron] And we'd love for you to be following us on Instagram so that you can see the behind the scenes stuff in our life. When we do the polls, we'd love for you to participate in those. We look at all those questions that you guys give us. [Jennifer] So, what we do is we poll you guys, we ask you to submit your questions, and then we use those to order these Q&As. [Aaron] Sometimes the questions are not all in the same category, but if we find enough in a category, we're like, "Oh, that's what we're gonna talk about." And so, we try and answer those. And we also always wanna start with: we don't have all the answers. Yeah. That's a funny way to start out a Q&A. We don't. We know this. [Aaron] We will answer to the best of our abilities, we will answer based off of things we've experienced and, as always, we're gonna try and, to the best of our abilities, point back to scripture. We don't always do that well either, but that's our heart because we know that the Word of God is the Word of God; it's perfect and we know that everything that we order our life by should be ordered by it. And so, we try, to the best of our ability, to do that, so. [Jennifer] So, today's kind of overarching topic is not seeing eye-to-eye in your marriage, which can play out in a lotta different ways, but I would also label this as disunity. So, this idea of not being unified-- [Aaron] Right, not on the same page. [Jennifer] Not on the same page in marriage. [Aaron] Which is that, the analogy of not seeing eye-to-eye, that we're unbalanced, you know, one's higher, one's lower, and so you're not seeing in the same space. And so, you have the, unity is a huge thing for marriage. And I'm sure that many marriages don't even struggle with this, right? Like, this is a unique issue in-- [Jennifer] I'm gonna correct Aaron, I'm gonna correct that. [Aaron] We're not gonna see eye-to-eye on this. [Jennifer] I think every marriage encounters this. Yeah. A lot, actually. Every human relationship. Yeah. [Aaron] In the history of human relationships. [Jennifer] Because we're all different heights. [Aaron] Like, it started in the Garden of Eden. You look at Adam and Eve. Come on, guys. [Aaron] Eve was like, "Oh, it does look good to eat." And Adam's like, "All right." No, just checkin'. [Aaron] And just, from the very beginning, not seeing eye-to-eye. But that's what we're gonna talk about today. There's quite a few questions, so why don't you start off reading some scripture? Okay. So, we're gonna dig into Ephesians 4 and starting in Verse 1, it says this: "I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, "urge you to walk in a manner worthy of "the calling to which you have been called, "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, "bearing with one another in love, "eager to maintain the unity of "the spirit in the bond of peace." And if, for some reason, you hear that verse right now and you're like, "You guys have shared "that verse so many times on this podcast"-- A couple. I'm not gonna apologize. The more we say that verse and the more you hear it and the more we live according to it, we will experience this, right babe? [Aaron] Well, and it's essentially Biblical meditation. We're repeating it, we're chewing on it, we're gonna say it over and over again because it's true. [Jennifer] And we're gonna see how it applies to our life and, you know, what we are-- [Aaron] Well, and it's a good tone to start with, to set the mood for this conversation, because no matter where you're at in your marriage, you could be thinking, like, "My husband "just thinks this certain way "and I'm not gonna get on that page with him." Or, "My wife just doesn't understand," fill in the blank. If we're eager to maintain unity with our bride-- Maintenance. With our spouse. [Aaron] That's gonna be the place that we start from, not a, "They need to change because I'm not gonna change." It's a, "What needs to change so that "we're on the same page?" And maintain is, that's a constantly occurring, that's not a, "Okay, we got on the same page "and now we're fine for the rest of our lives." This is a consistent-- Oh, we gotta realign-- Checking. Oh, we gotta do it again. Yeah. Oh, let's do it again. Let's continue to be this way, yeah. [Jennifer] Yeah, so I couldn't help but start out, also, obviously, God's Word is the priority and first and foremost, but I also wanted to start out sharing a little bit from Marriage After God because we've-- Book plug! Written a book for you and if you haven't gotten it yet, we want to urge you to get it, but this is from page 56 in Marriage After God and it talks about this idea of oneness, okay? You know, in Genesis, it talks about two becoming one flesh and so, we though it'd be great to elaborate on this in Marriage After God and so-- [Aaron] Okay, so I'm actually gonna read this section. Jennifer's actually a little outta breath, being pregnant and all-- He's saving me! [Aaron] So, it says this, it's on page 56: "One flesh does not mean two "independent individuals sometimes acting as one, "neither does it mean two individuals "negotiating a workable schedule where they "inhabit the same space but leave each other alone. "One flesh is a picture of unity, a joining together, "a growing together, where parts of each are woven together "in a way that there is no noticeable seam. "Oneness is one of the greatest ways "we show the world the true gospel." [Jennifer] So, what you're saying is it's powerful. Yeah. Our oneness in marriage. Did we write this? Yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, the idea of oneness it's not our idea, it's a Biblical idea, we pulled that from the Bible directly. And it's, again, the reason why I wanna talk about this and we always go back to it is because our marriage represents something more than just our marriage. It's a symbol that God created to represent Christ and the Church and the relationship between the two, that we are no longer separate, we're no longer nomads, we actually are part of Christ, we are one with Christ, the same way my wife and I are one. But when we walk in disunity, when we walk in brokenness and we're not seeing eye-to-eye, we're against each other where actually-- [Jennifer] Or even apathy where it's like, "I know we're off, I know we're"-- "And I don't care." "Not seeing eye-to-eye "and I don't care." Yeah. That's so dangerous. It's not the symbol that God intends it to be, so we're walking in opposition to God's way when we walk that way, so-- So, it's good to maintain that, you know, what you were talking about earlier, it's good to-- Maintain, yeah. Have priority in our marriage to focus on unity. [Aaron] So, question one, from the community, it says, "How do I become more selfless in my marriage? "I wanna please my spouse." Okay, first of all, this is just an outstanding question. I love that someone is even admitting that they want this because so often, our flesh gets in the way, our selfish nature gets in the way of even admitting this. [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause we're selfish. Yup. Naturally, without the Spirit workin' in us. I guess I would first say, this was specifically from a wife to a husband but I said spouse because it goes both ways, and the short answer and the practical answer is: serve the other person. Yeah. Right? The antidote to selfishness is service, you know? The antidote to wanting my feet washed is washing someone's feet. You know, you look at the picture of Christ and what he did for his disciples. And so, I guess, I just had a conversation with a brother from church, we were talkin' about meeting with people, and I brought up this idea of how, if you look at anything in life, how does anything grow? You feed it. Like a tree: you water it, you nurture it, you feed it, you prune it, and it grows. If I want my muscles to grow, I have to work them out, I have to use them, I have to feed them with the right nutrients, and I have to do the correct thing for them to work. I can't just sit back, wish they grew, desire them to grow, desire these things to happen, but do nothing. Children, right? You want them to grow-- You gotta feed 'em, it's like-- No. Oh, that's not-- But more than that, you can't just sit back and just let them have at it in the world, you gotta-- Yeah. Teach them and-- [Aaron] They can't be left to their own devices, they have to be guided and teached and disciplined and corrected-- Taught. And talked to and taught. You said teached. [Aaron] Teached. Oh, did I really? Yeah. Okay. So, in the same way, to become more selfless or, on the flip side, less selfish, you have to practice and work out that muscle. Yeah. So, an example in our marriage: we all go through these seasons where I want physical intimacy and maybe Jennifer can't give it to me. Like, we're pregnant right now, so this is a natural thing that happens, but times that we're not pregnant, maybe she's tired or whatever. And in my selfish flesh, I want something physical. But the selfless, spiritual-driven decision would be like, "Okay, I'm using that as a trigger, "I'm recognizing I want something. "I bet my wife wants something, too." And so, I tried, and I didn't do this every time, I don't do this all the time, but it's something I tried practicing is, "I'm gonna go and try and"-- [Jennifer] Give me the thing that it is you want. So, if it's a foot massage or-- Yeah, I want something-- Physical touch. [Aaron] Physical but I'm gonna go and say, "Hey, can I give you a massage?" And she wasn't even expecting it. Yeah. And that, it wasn't to manipulate, it was purely like, "I know I want something and right now, I'm just, "I know she probably can't give it or isn't interested "and it would be very selfish for me to "try and make her feel bad about it "or try and get something without her desiring it as well." So, I go and serve her. And so, that was one example, is practicing that muscle of service. Which, again, I'm not tryna make myself sound great. [Jennifer] So, I think the word that keeps coming to my mind as you're talking, Aaron, is the word initiation. And we have to be initiators, we have to be people who are willing to start first and not let our selfishness get in the way of that. And so, that would be my answer to this question, is: be an initiator. But even, prior to that, I would say we have to be people who are willing to get into God's Word and know it and let it transform us. And how does that happen? When we recognize our selfishness and we repent of it. Mm hm. Right? Because without repenting of your own selfishness when you see it flare up, you're never gonna change. You're always gonna be a selfish person. [Aaron] Which, repentance literally means to change your mind about. So, thinking you deserve something and therefore you're not gonna give something because if you're not getting what you deserve, why would you give what someone else doesn't deserve, right? And two scriptures come to mind when I think about this, a way of thinking about how to know when to give, to be selfless. I think of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others "as you would have them do unto you." And that's kind of a trigger, is any time I'm desiring something, it's probably a safe bet that the other person in my life, my wife, also is desiring something, right? And so, if I take that as a trigger, like, "Oh, I want, I'm trying, my flesh wants something "or my heart wants something." I can say, like, "Oh, I can go give this to my wife. "The thing that I want, I can give to her." But it's gonna be different, it may not be the exact thing I want, but. Let's say I want time to myself. It's probably possible that you want time to yourself. So, I can go be like, "Hey, "would you want to go out tonight?" Or, "Is there anyone you want to get together with?" Or, "Do you just need to go take a bath?" Yeah. Like, I can think that way. And so, I think of that loving your neighbor as yourself or doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, it's just thinking about the things that you want and then flipping it and saying, "How can I give the thing that I want to someone else?" The second verse that comes to mind is in Luke and it's about lending to people and it says this, it's Luke 6:34 through 36, it says, and this is Jesus talking: "And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, "what credit is that to you? "Even sinners lend to sinners to get back the same amount. "But love your enemies and do good and lend. "Expect nothing in return. "Your reward will be great "and you will be sons of the most high, "for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. "Be merciful even as your Father is merciful." And this is kind of not directly talking about selfishness but it's this idea of lending without this expectation. Like, give without saying, "I'm giving to you "only if I'm guaranteed you're gonna return it to me." That's true selflessness. So, that's what it's saying, is God's even kind to the ungrateful and evil, he's patient with them, let's the rain fall on them as well and gives them crops. That's what this idea's talking about. You know, so we should be merciful, so. [Jennifer] You know, I was gonna ask you a question in conjunction to this question and that is: when people, when a couple, when they're not seeing eye-to-eye or there's disunity in the marriage, usually they don't want to serve each other, right, and so there's that that they're combating. And my question was gonna be: how do you do that, how do you serve each other, how do you love each other amidst that disunity? But I feel like you just answered it in that scripture. [Aaron] Well, it's giving, so, and we always go back to this, I have this quote I say all the time: we can't let our obedience be contingent on our spouse's actions. Like, "Well, you're not loving me "the way I wanna be loved or deserve to be loved, "therefore I'm not gonna respect you." It doesn't work that way. The only person we have control over is ourselves. So, the only person we have to worry who's being obedient, yes, I'm concerned if my wife's being obedient to the Lord, but for me, the only person I can actually control, in the Spirit that God's given me, is myself. And so, even if my spouse isn't walking the way I want them to or doing what I want them to, I can still choose to walk in righteousness, I can still choose to walk in love and be graceful and merciful and patient and kind and loving, right, on my side. That's really good. So, even when there is disunity, even when you're not seeing eye-to-eye on a specific thing in your marriage, you can still love unconditionally. Right, exactly. Cool. Okay, so let's move on to number two. "How do we live for God together? "My husband never really has been "to church or anything like that, so." [Aaron] Okay, and again, this would go back to you have a wife that's not, doesn't go to church with you, isn't a believer, and the husband is a believer or vice versa in the situation. [Jennifer] So, how do you live for God together when one person isn't already living for God? [Aaron] Again, I go back to you can't control the other person. You can't make someone live for God that doesn't wanna live for God. [Jennifer] Basically, this is a not seeing eye-to-eye on a spiritual level. [Aaron] Yeah, on the greatest level, I would imagine. But you, the Bible gives instruction to the wife on how she can walk in a certain way that can totally spiritually influence her husband. You see that with the husband, the husband can walk a certain way that will influence his wife. [Jennifer] Regardless, any person who is following Christ and Christ is living inside of them has an impact in this world. Yeah. Bottom line. [Aaron] And if your spouse, as the Bible says, is willing to stay with you, even if they don't love God, if they're not walking with God, and they're staying with you and you love God, think about the thousands and thousands of hours that that person who doesn't know God is gonna be around God because of you. Like, it's not like you walk up to a stranger on the street and they had a split second that you got to preach the gospel to them. Like, this person's living in the gospel daily. It's going have effect. Mm hm. [Aaron] So, I would say there's no answer on how you can walk together with God if the other person doesn't want to, but you can walk with God for your spouse and in front of your spouse and toward your spouse. [Jennifer] And I would say your greatest desire, before even living for God together, is: how can I get my spouse to live for God? And so, being prayerful for their salvation and being prayerful that they have a growing desire to serve God. Nonstop. [Jennifer] That's a foundational thing that needs to happen. One more note on this. So, me and you, we got married, and from the beginning, wanted to serve God together. Yeah. Right? Essentially, what this wife is desiring, for her and her husband, we were there. But even in the middle of two believers who love God, loved each other, and wanted to serve God together, we were often not on the same page spiritually, we were often at odds with each other in how we wanted to serve God, in our own sins. So, even in the midst of what you might be desiring, of that perfect, like, we're both chasing God together, you still have to walk in your own faith, uprightly, with God for your spouse because they're going to fail you at times, they're not going to be on the same page with you. And that's something that we experienced. Yeah. So, we were on the other spectrum of wanting to do it together but still felt chaotic sometimes. [Jennifer] Yeah, and I would say, after all these years of continually growing in our personal relationship with God, that is what has brought us closer together and has driven that desire to continue to serve Him together. And so, I would say to live for God means that you know Him and so, a good starting place, well, we already talked prayer and praying for salvation, but, is knowing God, getting in His Word, going through resources like Husband After God or Wife After God. [Aaron] Yeah, our marriage devotionals. [Jennifer] Yeah, which you can get and maybe you'll start it and maybe your spouse won't. Maybe you'll be halfway through and it's still sitting untouched for your spouse. Maybe you'll be finished with it for months and finally they pick it up. I don't know how God orchestrates all of that, all I know is I've heard plenty of stories where a couple has the resource and they start going through it and it draws their hearts closer to God, so. And that's just one resource out of so many out there. [Aaron] Okay, so question number three. We have a lotta questions, so we'll see if we can get through 'em. It says, "What are some tips for consistency "and communication within marriage to build intimacy? "i.e. You may not be in an agreement on a topic, "so how do you communicate through it?" [Jennifer] Gosh, I wanna say don't go into it super inflamed and heated. But that's the best way. You go in at a hundred. No, but sometimes you just feel that intense about it and so, whatta you do, Aaron, when you have that intense of an emotion about a topic or about something that you need to navigate with your spouse? I mean, practically, being quiet, starting with silence. I think of that scripture that says, "Be slow to speak and quick to listen and quick to hear." 'Cause often, to be honest, most of the communication issues in marriage is misunderstanding. Because you, as a emotional creatures, God's made you more emotional, you're gonna say something with emotional words and I'm gonna interpret that a hundred different ways and none of the ways I interpret it are how you feel, right? And men being logical creatures, and that doesn't mean women are illogical, it's just hearing something and it's not what you meant and it's not what you're saying and I'm hearing it a certain way and I'm putting it through my own filters and that's what happens, so. Being slower to just jump at the person and be like, "Oh, you said this and that hurt me." But actually hearing and listening and being slower to saying stuff because once the words leave our lips, they're gone and they're-- Yeah, but we're also held accountable to them, right? I think something that I've learned in our own marriage, Aaron, is the way that I can have self control in coming to you with my emotions and still be respectful but still communicate them to you and let you know, "Hey, when this happened, I felt this way." And so, I'm not yelling at you, I'm not out of control, I'm not making you feel little, I'm just explaining this is what happened and this is how it made me feel. And I think it's important for couples, like you said, to be slow to speak and quick to listen so that we hear each other. I think hearing each other is so important. [Aaron] Yeah, and then, and we always bring this up, is: what is your intention? Is your intention to win, is it to defeat your spouse? [Jennifer] Well, the goal should be unity, right? Right. But that has to be a conscious decision, like, "Am I mad right now and I wanna destroy you "or do I actually want there to be peace?" And not just apathy, like, "I just don't wanna deal with it "so let's not talk about it anymore," but, "Am I fighting for something and it's chaotic "or is this something that I even need to be fighting about? "Is this even matter, what I'm frustrated about "or what we're miscommunicating about?" But recognizing that the whole purpose, at the end of it, is that we're unified, we're reconciled, we are one again, we're in intimacy, you know? [Jennifer] Well, and intimacy means to be known. It's not just a physical intimacy, although that's how you're known physically, it means to be known. And the way that we make ourselves known is we are vulnerable, we are transparent, we are real. And so, we're not hiding anything, we're not keeping things from each other, but we're also not disrespectfully just throwing it all out there. There's this self control that comes with it and a safe place where we know we can communicate back and forth and that's what builds intimacy in marriage. That's what makes me feel known, that's what makes you feel known. [Aaron] Yeah, so knowing your end result, which is, it should be humbleness, because God wants his people to be humble, and it should be reconciliation. So, that deals with 99% of our arguments from day to day. It's very rare that we're having arguments over real big things, it's always the little things. And then, what happens is you get all those little things, when the big things do come up, you're gonna be infinitely better at dealing with that with your spouse 'cause you know that you're on the same team. [Jennifer] A good little side note tip would be to start out and use sentences with I instead of you. So, you're not pointing the finger here, you're actually opening your hand and saying, "I want you to know who I am." [Aaron] Mm hm, yeah, that's good, that was a good tip. So, here's a good one. Everyone's gonna have some level of issue. [Jennifer] What's the first thing that pops into your mind when we say this question? [Aaron] How do you work through disagreements on hobbies? And the example that was given is motorcycles and it's probably very personal to that person. Yeah. But women have, this actually could be a wife's hobby. But any hobby at all, hobby's essentially the extracurricular, it's, "I have this passion "outside of my home or outside of my work or"-- [Jennifer] Which, I know you'll generally answer, but I just have to say, when I saw this question come through, I think there would be a disagreement on something like the example they gave, motorcycles-- Motorcycles, right. [Jennifer] Because it's dangerous, right, and so, we also have to address that aspect of, maybe, what this question means, but why don't you kick it off? [Aaron] I would, on the hobbies side of things, regardless of what the hobby is, because there's so many different levels of ability. There could be a wife that is into skydiving with their husband and most people would be like, "No way," but they're like, "No, this is totally fun." So, I'm not gonna just pick on any specific hobby 'cause that doesn't matter, for the most part. I'm sure there's hobbies that are absolutely like, "Well, that's sin, you shouldn't be doing that." [Jennifer] And then there are safer ones, like quilting. [Aaron] And then there could be totally benign ones that mean nothing and it's like, "Well, what's the big deal? "This is not a sin that I'm doing this." The questions should always be wrapped up in wisdom. Can you afford it? If your wife or your husband's not in agreement with it, that should be immediately a red flag because you're not in unity and it's not just a, "That person needs to change how they think about my hobby," because what if God put an insight or a discernment in your spouse? Because remember, you guys are on the same team, regardless of if you feel like you're in a team or not, and your spouse has a reason for having an issue with it. Now, that spouse, as you guys communicate about the hobby, humbly, it could, you could find out that the spouse just has, like your wife, has some sort of disposition from a childhood about the thing you're doing. So, it has nothing to do with anything else other than they just feel uncomfortable. [Jennifer] But if that's the case, is it worth it to listen and hear? Absolutely. Yeah. [Aaron] But what I'm saying is they could, through the conversation, be like, "You know what? "I am being irrational and it's not that big of a deal." Or-- The point is that they're talking about it. Yeah. Or it comes to this side of, "Well, "I just can't get behind it." And then at that point, are you gonna say, "Well, then get outta here 'cause I'm gonna keep doin' it"? And then essentially, you're choosing a hobby over your spouse. Well, on the flip side to this, the spouse that's in disagreement with that spouse's hobby, what's your heart posture and reasoning? Because are you just against it because you don't like them spending time alone from you? Are you just against it because you don't like what they like? So, I feel like the biggest part of this question, and it's for both spouses in the marriage, is: what are the motivations of your heart? On both sides. And are you communicating that to each other? [Aaron] Right, and usually, if you're defensive about something, if you're trying to defend and protect your hobby, that usually is rooted in something and you gotta immediately start asking yourself, "Why am I trying to protect this so much? "Why does this thing mean so much to me?" Because you could be using that hobby as a surrogate for your marriage. Like, "I get more fulfillment out of this thing "than I do out of my marriage or my kids." [Jennifer] Like an escape or something, yeah. [Aaron] And if that's the case, that's dangerous and that's called an idol. You should be careful with that. So, I think, any, there should be nothing in our life, not a single hobby should have any sort of weight against our family, against our ministry, against our marriage, against our responsibilities at our work, with our kids, none of that. Anything, it doesn't matter what the hobby is, it shouldn't be off the table for a negotiation. It should be something that you should humbly be willing to release, if necessary. And the necessity could be your wife or your husband just is like, "I don't like it." And to be honest, even if they're irrational, they are one with you. And if you're gonna just say, "I disagree with you, "you're irrational, I'm gonna keep doing it," you've just literally, how are you ever gonna be intimate, on any level, with a person that you said, "I don't care what you say, I'm doing it anyway"? You just can't. So, I would just put a warning in anyone's life, and this goes for the husbands and the wives, if there's anything in their life, a book club, a quilting club, a hobby of, like, you name it, everyone that's listening is probably thinking, "Oh, I have this hobby." [Jennifer] "I know what my thing is," yeah. [Aaron] And my job right now is not to say hobbies are bad 'cause you can totally have a healthy hobby, maybe it's something that you do with your family, maybe that it's something that you do by yourself, and you have total control over it and it doesn't get in the way of your responsibilities and your family totally feels taken care of and loved and that you're present-- [Jennifer] And they actually enjoy participating in it with you. [Aaron] Yeah, there's lots of things. But at the same time, if you have any level of, "I'm not lettin' this thing go "and no one's gonna stop me," that's a wrong heart. And whatever that thing is that you're into has got some sorta hold of you that you need to deal with. Yeah. So, I wanna share two things. One of them just kinda popped into my heart and I can't push it away for some reason and that is: if you, the individual, have some sort of hobby and you've been feeling convicted in your own heart because of timing, finances, lack of-- How often you're doin' it. [Jennifer] Yeah, whatever the thing is, please please please please please don't push that feeling off and just wait for your spouse to come and share their disagreement with you about it. Be a mature, Christian person, yield to the Holy Spirit-- Who's speaking to you. And say, "God, what are you trying to tell me "and how can I surrender this to you?" If that means give it up 100%, are you willing to do that? I just felt like I had to say that. The other thing is more personal, but I just wanted to share an encouragement. I didn't want it to all sound negative. But Aaron, you have been so good at, first, learning who I am, I don't wanna say studying me, but over time together, you know me pretty well and you know the things that fuel me, as a person, like writing and painting and crafting, and you encourage me in it. Now, there have been times in our marriage where we've been so strapped, it's like, "You can't spend that money on that, "you know, whatever that thing is." But there's also been, often, there's been times where you know that I've been going, going, going and you look at me and go, "I think you "just need to go to a coffee shop and write. "You just need to go do this thing with your girlfriends. "You just need to," and you're a supporter and an advocate for giving me space and time to be fueled by the things that interest me and I just had to say that because I think that, as a husband and wife, we have an incredible position and opportunity to support one another in the things that do fuel us, the things, the hobbies that we're interested in. And you've been really good at that, so I just wanted to say thank you but also use it as a testimony for those listening that they can be that way in marriage, it just requires communication. Yeah. That was good, thank you, I wasn't expecting that. Okay, why don't you read question number five? [Jennifer] How do you keep chasing dreams God's called you to when your spouse is in a totally negative place? So, I'm imagining this is a season, not just a day but not always like this, but they're just in a negative place and how are you supposed to keep moving forward with those dreams that you, maybe, were chasing together or were hoping to chase together? [Aaron] This, it sounds more personal, it sounds like this person, whoever it is, feels like God's called them to something specific. Oh, like individually. Yeah. And they're spouse is in another place. Okay. Either emotionally or mentally or maybe they hate their job and the other spouse is trying to pursue a ministry of some sort or-- Okay. [Aaron] The question itself tells me that the initial, the way the question's worded tells me that they're missing out on the first calling. The marriage? The marriage. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's what I was thinking. [Aaron] We have a responsibility, we're told to love our neighbor as ourself. And I always say, "Who's your closest neighbor?" Yeah. It's your spouse. And then your kids and then your actual neighbors and then your fellowship. And it's not like you neglect the others for the first, but you don't go out of order. I don't neglect my wife, when she needs me the most, to go serve someone else. That's out of order. Well, and here's what I think about that, is: if, let's say it is individual and one of the spouses is pursuing ministry or whatever they feel God has called them to do or maybe it's that they had a specific calling as a couple and that person's in a negative place now and they're not doing that anymore. How effective would either one of them be in any of those situations if they're not unified in their marriage? Not very effective at all. Well, and here's, this is actually the sad part, is they actually could be effective. But they're not effective where it counts. You know, we have children at home, we have our marriage to take care of, and it's not just to have a happy marriage, it's that we have a powerful marriage and that we, like, if I can't minister, we say this in our book Marriage After God quite a bit, actually, if I can't minister to my spouse, what right do I have to go and minister to someone else? I don't want to minister to you, you're in a negative place, but I'm gonna go try and minister other people that are in a negative place. There's something backwards with that. And I also understand that you could be, have already in this mode and you see God moving and God's using you and then your spouse, your husband, your wife, is going through something. And you're like, "Well, do I have to put everything "on hold because this thing's happening?" Yes. Is it totally possible that God brought them to that place and then is asking them to postpone it or wait until-- Absolutely. Something else happens? That could be part of it, right, just as an encouragement. [Aaron] Yeah, I'll get, I don't have the specific scripture on this, but Jesus, when Jesus talked to the Pharisees, you know, we all have a negative connotation of the Pharisees, right? But the Pharisees were God's people and they were the priests in line, they were the ones that were to teach the law to everyone, right? But Jesus, the problem Jesus had with the Pharisees was not just that they were Pharisees. The reason they get a bad rap is because of how they acted. They acted holy and they did the thing that they believed God was calling them to do without doing the things that they should have been doing. [Jennifer] The very specific things that He-- [Aaron] Yeah, He gives this example and He says, "You take advantage of your parents. "You say, "The things that I would "give to you, I give to God instead."" And that's exactly, that's what this question sounds like to me. "God's calling me to this thing over here "but my spouse is holding me back." And I feel like Jesus would say the exact same thing to that person: "Okay, you wanna do what I want you to do, but you're "neglecting the thing I've already told you to do. "I've told you to honor your husband "or submit to your husband." Or, "I've told you to love your wife "as Christ loves the Church. "And yet, you don't wanna do that thing 'cause "they're holding you back from my call in your life? "My call in your life is that also." And so, in another place, Jesus tells to the Pharisees, he says, "You tithe your mint and your cumin "and yet you neglect the weightier things of the law." He says, "You should, the weightier things "are justice and love and mercy." And he says, "And you don't do those things when you "shoulda done those things and the other ones." So, I just go back to this idea of if there's something going on, let's say you have a spouse that gets injured and you no longer can go do the things that you usually do and the ministry that you had and now you have to focus on your spouse. Does that change that you're doing ministry? No. No, you just have changed your energies to a place that the energies need to be right now. If your spouse is in an emotional place, broken, they lost a family member, they're depressed, they're going through things, do you just leave them behind because they're getting in the way of the true ministry? No, if it says the good shepherd was willing to leave the 99 for the one, the one is your spouse. You don't, you leave the 99 that God can take care of because it's God and it's His sheep and His ministry, and you can minister to the one that God's given you. And minister and wash and take care of. And that should never be neglected. I just, we can't do that, I can't tell someone, "Yeah." Well, first of all, we like to use words like, "God told me to," and "God's shown me," and "God's given me" as if that's a trump card. "You can't tell me I'm not supposed to "do this thing because God called me to it." But you know what I can tell you? I know what the Word of God says and if you're not doing the things that the Word of God says, it doesn't matter what you believe, you're wrong. And I'm not trying to be harsh but I am trying to be harsh because many, many families have fallen apart because of this very thing. "No, I'm doing what God wants me to do "and you need to be left behind." [Jennifer] They forsake what He said in His Word. [Aaron] Yeah, and another quote in the book, I said-- In what book? In Marriage After God, yeah. I said, "Don't sacrifice your marriage "on the altar of, quote unquote, ministry." Like, "Oh, I'm doing ministry over here, "so my wife has to deal with it. "She's not gonna ever see me, she has no idea if I love her. "She gets the last bits of my energies "rather than getting the best of my energies "and being the thing that energizes me to do more ministry." It's so much more fruitful to do it the other way than leave them behind. And I just, I think that's my answer. [Jennifer] I think you've covered it really well. So well that I think we should move on to number six. Do you wanna read that one? [Aaron] Yeah, it's about me. Do you, Jennifer, struggle with trusting me? [Jennifer] Do I struggle with trusting you? [Aaron] Specifically speaking about porn, how can you battle thoughts, like the-- [Jennifer] So, I just have to say, I feel like we need to record a whole 'nother episode on this topic altogether because-- [Aaron] We've already done one but-- I know. We should probably do another one. Well, I have received, really, lately, a lot of wives messaging me about this very topic, about trust and rebuilding trust after finding out that your spouse has sinned against you, sinned, especially with pornography, and so, that just needs to happen, but it's not gonna happen this season, so I'm just gonna have to plant that seed and say, "Stay tuned." But just to answer this question, up front, for you guys. I don't struggle to trust you anymore, Aaron. Why? [Jennifer] I think it's because we've worked so hard on building that trust back up and it absolutely takes time. And because, in the beginning, there were times that I did struggle with doubt and fear, especially times that I know you were left alone while I was out running an errand or something like that. And you know what it required is humility and communication. Because I had to be willing to say, "Hey, I'm thinking about you right now and I just, "I don't want you to fall into temptation. "Just be strong, I'll be back at this time." Or when I got back, I would ask you, "Hey, how've you been?" And the more times that we had encounters where you continued to stay pure, it built that trust up in my heart. [Aaron] And then, specifically, along that journey, what did I do, anytime I did choose to get back into pornography? You told me and you repented and you shared with me your own frustrations over the struggle of sin that you had, but you owned it and you were real with me and-- [Aaron] And no matter how little the offense was. [Jennifer] No, and I knew that you struggled with shame and guilt and I knew it was hard for you to tell me. And you learned how to give me a place to respond when I was emotional over it because it makes, I mean, just thinking-- Without trying to control your response. Yeah, 'cause it just, it made me broken knowing that those things took place and I felt a lotta things and I thought a lotta thoughts. But I would say that the humility of you coming to me or me coming to you and the reconciliation process was so important. And when I say reconciliation, I mean we talked about it. Even if it took two and a half hours, we talked about it. We prayed for each other and we tried to affirm each other that we were gonna move forward. Right. And the, some of the, just the practical things is: first of all, it does take time and you should never expect your spouse to just flip a switch and be like, "Well, I'm gonna trust you again." 'Cause that's actually not even Biblical. It does take time to build trust. Now, forgiveness immediately is Biblical, but that doesn't mean immediately, "Oh, we're back to where we were." No, there's been broken trust and it takes time, it takes repetitive purity, right? And then, the other practical is: I made a commitment to tell you, to let you know. And here's the thing, is: the offenses, although they changed in size, relatively, the thing I did, I still confessed it to you and you were able to see the true repentance in me. And so, it's not like it was the same each time, it was less and less and less. But my continuing to come to you and say, "Hey, I made this choice. "Yeah, it was a split second, "but I chose it and I feel shameful about it "and I wanna repent to you because this is not who I am "and it's not who I wanna be and so, I need to tell you." 'Cause I've learned, through the Word of God and through experience, that the confession and repentance is one of the ways that God's given us to kill our flesh. My flesh hates it, it wants to hide in the darkness and keep its, it wants, my flesh wants to not be known because it feels icky and I don't wanna be seen for what I truly am. So, the being consistent and telling you the truth and not just waiting 'til you found out but actually coming forth and saying, "Hey, I made a bad choice." And calling it what it is, a choice, not minimizing it, not justifying it. Those kinds of things helped you trust that I was actually changing. And that I love you and that I don't wanna be that person and that I'm willing to tell you because I want you to know, for my sake, so that I can heal and change and repent and be repented of that sin. [Jennifer] Yeah, I appreciate you sharing all of that and the second part of this question is: how can you battle those thoughts? And I just am thinking back to all of the stuff that I used to struggle with because the sin that you chose to partake in were like seeds planted in my mind and heart for the temptation to feel insecure or unloved and fall into those traps where your mind is just going wildly crazy with the worst kinds of thoughts about you and of our relationship. And I would say that being vulnerable with those and still being willing to be in an intimate place with you where I can say, "Because you did this, I feel this way," or, "I'm thinking these things," and revealing those types of thoughts to you helped me battle them. Because I gave you the opportunity to affirm me and say, "No no no no no, I know I chose that "and I'm so sorry, but that's not who you are. "You don't have to be insecure because of what I did." And there was this back and forth of understanding each other that I think was really valuable. Right. And again, another thing that, for the spouse that has dealt with this and is dealing with it, the mistrust is a natural consequence for a sin. Yeah. Right? And so, we have to recognize that. And so, another thing that builds trust, from the offender's side, is, 'cause what happens is: I've confessed, we've dealt with that event, and then you are leaving somewhere and it's a time when you know I would, usually, in the past-- [Jennifer] You mean I flared up with anxiety inside my whole being? Well, but, no, if you say something like, "Hey"-- Oh. "I wanna encourage you to stay pure while I'm gone." The not truly repentant person would say, "Babe, babe, we already dealt with that, you don't need to bring that up." Oh, getting defensive-- Like, "C'mon, you don't trust me?" No, I should be totally humble and willing to be like, "You're right, thank you for reminding me "and be praying for me and I'm gonna let you know "if I feel tempted and I'm gonna call you and I'm gonna." Instead of being defensive and prideful, I'm gonna be humble and realize that it's totally natural for my wife to not trust me and she's gonna learn trust by how I receive her care for me in that moment. You reminding me, like, "Hey, don't go to that thing." Me receiving that is a trustworthy action, right? Yeah. Another way that I battled thoughts of mistrust was I asked a lot of questions. So, if I ever felt uneasy about a situation or discerning. You know, maybe I woke up from a dream or something where it was like I couldn't shake it, I asked. Or you just feel it. Like, "Hey, something's off." Yeah, I asked you. I asked, "Have you been struggling?" And so, I think that when we recognize that we're battling thoughts, you can't just keep battling them, you can't just keep, you're just gonna be wrestling the whole time, right? And so, being able to open up and share with your spouse the types of thoughts that you're having and also go to God and say, "God, these are "the types of thoughts that I'm having," and finding scriptures that would help fight those thoughts for you and-- [Aaron] Well, and also be praying and asking God to transform your own heart, asking God to transform your spouse's heart. To purify your marriage. Yeah, to use you both for His work and for His kingdom. [Jennifer] See, I told you that this was gonna be a big topic. I feel like we just-- There's a lot, there's a lot more, yeah. [Jennifer] We need to be able to do another episode on that. Yeah. All right, so the last question, it's kind of a bigger, blanket one. It'd be: What is your number one advice to couples who are currently struggling with this eye-to-eye thing? They're not on the same page, they feel at odds with each other. [Jennifer] Well, I will say this: one of the most powerful, impactful, incredible ways that God got ahold of our hearts, Aaron, and made change and transformation in our lives and our marriage was entering into mature, Christian, Biblical community and being transparent with people who we allowed to speak into our lives and say-- "You're off base, bro." But sometimes we didn't even see that we were off on that whole eye-to-eye thing and we got called out for it and so, like, bickering or whatever the thing was. And I just remember how, and even still to this day, it's been such a huge part of our testimony, is being in Biblical community and how being a part of the body, and I don't mean like a one day a week type thing, I mean immersed in it where you know you can text that person, call that person, meet them on the fly for dinner to gain wisdom, to ask advice, to cry about, to praise for, you know, all the things. [Aaron] So, the bit of advice I would give that goes in align with being a community, and it kind of, it's, I talked about it quite a bit in this episode, is humbleness. And in Luke 14:11, he says, "For everyone "who exalts himself will be humbled "and he who humbles himself will be exalted." And all through Proverbs, it talks about this idea of the humble will be lifted up and the haughty are God's opposed. To receive anything from community, you have to be humbled and willing to hear. Like, "Hey, I think you are being a bonehead, Aaron." Like, "Oh, you're right, I agree. "I didn't realize that, I need to change in that area, "I need to go apologize to my wife." So, that humbleness, and even outside of community, in your marriage, if you're in a difficult place, there's something miraculously, spiritually powerful about humbleness. All of these fights we get in, all of the eye-to-eye issues, it's all because they're not seeing our eyes, they're not on our page, which is pridefulness. When we could be like, "Maybe I need to be on their page." [Jennifer] Or humility would point your spouse's eyes up to God and say, "No, look at Him." Right. [Jennifer] "Don't look at me in this, look at Him." [Aaron] Or recognizing you're wrong or maybe don't know or don't have the answer or need to sit back and say, "You know what? "I'm just gonna, I'm gonna let you have this one because, "I mean, I know I've been wrong in the past anyways." It's not a false humility, it's true humbleness, recognizing who you serve, you serve God. And so, in community, which was the number one thing that we believe totally transformed our life, but it also took us, in community, being willing to listen and hear and receive, which takes humbleness. And time. And time, yeah. So, that would be my bit of advice, is: man, humbleness is gonna go infinitely farther than any level of selfishness or pride. [Jennifer] So, the next time, it could be today, tomorrow, next week-- [Aaron] It's gonna be right after this episode, probably. [Jennifer] If you are finding yourself in a place where you're not seeing eye-to-eye with your spouse, remember humility. Absolutely. Remember to pray. Remember to go to God and say, "God, what is it that you want? "'Cause I don't want to get in "the way of what you're doing." Yeah, "How can my response and actions "and attitude right now glorify you?" And that, man, it changes everything 'cause you're like, "Oh. "Yelling and throwing a dish at the wall "is not gonna glorify God right now." Or, "Telling my spouse that they don't know anything "or that they're wrong, those might not glorify God." [Jennifer] Well, that wraps us up for this episode of having answered your guys' questions. Thank you again so much for being there and submitting those questions when we called out for them. Yeah, appreciate it. And, again, if you wanna participate in a Q&A episode, all you need to do is follow @marriageaftergod on Instagram and wait for the next time we poll for 'em. And then you can submit your question and we try and get through as many as we can with the time that we have. And if we ever do an episode where you're like, "I know my question would've fit in there," and maybe we didn't get to it, just message us and let us know. But we just love hearing from you guys and we love participating in this way where we get to kind of answer your questions or at least try. [Aaron] So, as usual, we end every episode with prayer. So Jennifer, why don't you pray for us? [Jennifer] Dear God, thank you so much for marriage. Thank you for our spouses and thank you for the opportunity that we get every day to walk this life with each other. We pray for humility to be a priority in our lives, that we would walk humbly before each other, that we would be motivated by how you're moving in our lives individually and in our marriages. God, we thank you for our marriages and we just pray for unity. We pray that, even in times where we don't see eye-to-eye or we have disagreements or there's conflict, that you would remain at the center of our marriage and that we can submit our hearts to you. God, we pray that we would be one with each other, that we would pursue oneness in our marriage and support each other in that way. And God, we pray that these situations that come up in marriage where we don't see eye-to-eye would be an opportunity where we can learn from each other, where we can grow to understand each other, where we can experience intimacy. No matter what, we pray that your will would be done and that you would be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So, thanks for joining us on this week's episode. We love y'all, we thank you for being a part of the Marriage After God community. And we just wanna invite you, if you have not yet, would you leave us a review? We love your reviews, they help the podcast get reach, and new people find it because of your reviews. So, if you wanna leave us a star rating and a text review, we'd love that. See you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Season 2, Episode 6 CES 20 Jennifer Capps, NCSU Matt Kruea (00:00): You're listening to Trade Show Live on the Road!, featuring conversations with the people who bring trade shows to life, including attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and trade show, industry thought leaders. We attend trade shows around the country in a wide variety of industries, from healthcare to consumer products. And everything in between. The podcast is a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. And now let's go on the road with Trade Show Live. Janet Kennedy (00:28): Janet Kennedy: (00:28) Trade Show Live is on the road at CES 2020 we are in Eureka Park, which is where all the startups are and we happen to have a number of startups with us, with a very strong NC State tie. So we brought in one of our honor guests here today, Jennifer Capps, who's a leader in the entrepreneurship program at NC State to talk about her impressions of CES and where she feels NC State's ecosystem of entrepreneurship would fall. So Jennifer, welcome to the podcast. Jennifer Capps (00:59): Thank you so much for having me here today. Janet Kennedy (01:01): Okay, I bet you're sort of like freaking out at your first experience at CES. Jennifer Capps (01:05): I am. This is like the world's biggest playground for entrepreneurship and innovation. Nerds like myself. This is amazing. How can you just walk down an aisle and not be super inspired? You absolutely can't. I keep getting distracted. Speaker 2 (01:19): If I'm going to meet someone, I had to make myself pull away from some of these booths because the ideas are just phenomenal. You know, this is the ultimate shiny object syndrome issue except in Eureka park or think where it's like 2000 different businesses ideas, just amazingly overwhelming. Oh absolutely. But outside come coming from NC State and working with our students, they overwhelm me in the exact same way. I get the absolute privilege to work with students from all across the university and one of our intro level classes and these students are very new to this world of innovation and entrepreneurship in many ways, therefore is to go out and study markets and identify pain points that could become entrepreneurial opportunities. And then very quickly they proposed solutions. Well when I come to a place like this and I see so many of the ideas that students have proposed in the last few years, showing up at CES in some way, that is such a powerful tool for me to take back into the classroom to inspire them and all of a sudden this becomes something that's aspirational for them. Janet Kennedy (02:27): Do you feel like students are coming in a little more hardwired to think about themselves as entrepreneurs or owners of businesses? Jennifer Capps (02:35): I do. In many ways students are coming in knowing the word entrepreneurship and knowing that it sounds really cool. They're open to exploring the idea of entrepreneurship. What many of them don't understand is one, the work that goes into it, you know, in many ways they have sort of the shark tank view or they think, I just have to have a great idea and get up in front of national TV and people will fund me. So we about the steps that it takes and we talk about the fact that it's okay to fail as long as you do so for the right reasons. We talk about pivots, you know, it's so interesting that entrepreneurial pivot is a generally accepted principle here. We've already talked to dozens of companies represented here who talk about the pivots that they've made because of information they received at CES, but as individuals we often don't give ourselves the same permission to pivot in our career choices. Jennifer Capps (03:26): And I think that's one of the things that I work with our entrepreneurship students on. I think that's one of the interesting things too about coming even when you're not 100% ready, but you're still flexible enough to rethink. An example is NC State grads who founded brilliant soul came last year thinking this is a gaming thing. Now what they, what brilliant soul is for those folks who haven't listened to Jeff guard's podcast is basically an insole that has haptic technology in it and sensors that they envisioned using for VR and gaming purposes. Well, they got a ton of feedback from the biggest names in footwear last year and they haven't pivoted. They have expanded how they've developed their product. So now they're thinking about how does it apply to healthcare? How does it apply to other types of non-gaming functions? They even had a podiatrist who's a Colonel in the U S army stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina helped them with very specifically redesigning from some of her perspectives in a military environment. Jennifer Capps (04:34): So I'm absolutely so proud of them for not thinking, Hey, people didn't want my product. They recognize that input that the product needed to evolve to grab the market. That was one of the most impressive things to me as well about that company, how open they are to making these adjustments and going where the market's need them. And I think that's such a powerful thing that we can show to our NC State students. It's something that I'd like to get our NC State alumni entrepreneurs involved with because I think they need those reminders as well. I could see NC State entrepreneurs having an entire wall representation at the next CES. That would be an amazing dream of mine. Janet Kennedy (05:14): So the program at NC State does involve mentorship, right? Jennifer Capps (05:18): Absolutely. In many different ways. NC State entrepreneurship offers a mentoring program where we bring people from the community in to interact very naturally with our students and we let the students and the mentors pair themselves off as they see fit. Janet Kennedy (05:34): One of the other things I found interesting at CES is the number of people who have come up who either are from North Carolina and they're so excited to see the state of North Carolina represented here or they recognize that we are a growing, expanding dynamic technology. Jennifer Capps (05:52): Absolutely. The NC State Alumni Association has done such a wonderful of creating an entrepreneurs affinity group within that association, so entrepreneurs can now get together, they can network, they can build relationships, find potential new clients, and let's not forget, NC State doesn't just produce entrepreneurs. We produce really great employees of startup companies so they can recruit for their first level employees as well. Janet Kennedy (06:20): You know, that's a really good point because if you have employees with an entrepreneurship mindset, they're going to be problem solvers. They're not going to expect you to hand over a fully written job description and it not change. They're probably going to push back a little bit and challenge the companies that they join to do better, to be better and to innovate. Jennifer Capps (06:39): That's absolutely true and that's a great point. That is one of the cornerstones of our educational process within NC State entrepreneurship. Instilling that entrepreneurial mindset and then helping students figure out where their best fit in that world is going to be. In some cases, that is going to be a startup. In other cases, it's going to be employee number five of a startup, and in other cases that's going to be joining a large corporation, but bringing that entrepreneurial mindset into everything that they do. Now, help me understand how the entrepreneurship program works within the ecosystem of NC State. So I come in as a student and I'm an English major. I'm a theater major. I'm a engineering major. Where does the entrepreneurship program, Paul, NC State entrepreneurship and the NC State entrepreneurship Alliance spans across the entire university. Jennifer Capps (07:31): NC State has so many absolutely amazing entrepreneurship programs. The Poole College of Management has many incredible entrepreneurship opportunities. You can get a major in business with a concentration in entrepreneurship. You can get a minor in business management with a concentration in entrepreneurship. They housed the entrepreneurship clinic, which is such an amazing program. But then in our other colleges, the college of engineering has an engineering entrepreneurs program that is absolutely spectacular open to any student on campus. We have a minor in arts entrepreneurship and a rapidly evolving arts entrepreneurship program that is just outstanding. We have a lot of work and social entrepreneurship. The design school has many entrepreneurial opportunities. Our College of Textiles has, I could go on for days and days and days. NC State entrepreneurship exists to support all of those communities in ways that help them grow without taking away the unique flavor that they were built on in the first place. Jennifer Capps (08:39): So we house like our entrepreneurs garage in partnership with HD rally where any student on campus can come, they can network, they can meet other entrepreneurs, they can actually build their businesses inside of the garage. You know, they can invite a client in a meeting or an investor in, which is a whole lot nicer than, Hey can you come and meet me at the Starbucks down the road and you know, I might be late cause I'm going to have to take a bus to get there. So we try to give them places that it's a professional work environment. We have our Albright living and learning village for students who want to live 24 hours a day in a community with other entrepreneurial thinkers. We have general education courses. I mean the list goes on and on and on. So I think one of the biggest things that we do as students are coming into the university, we want to help them find the lay of the land. Jennifer Capps (09:30): If they want to learn about entrepreneurship, there's numerous, all our cart services that they can take advantage of while they're there. And part of our job is to help them figure out what that looks like. I want to go back to school now. Oh my gosh, I'm, I'm ready to be an entrepreneur again. Well, you know, I've been a part of this since 2001 and I have been so [inaudible] about helping NC State build these things because they weren't there when I was there. And I think, wow, how much fun would this have been? But now I'm honored to get to work with these students and man they keep me on my toes. They are so smart and so creative and I absolutely adore getting up and working with them every single day. Janet Kennedy (10:11): All right, now I'm jealous too. So might have to bump you off at CES so I could move into your lower end. Jennifer Capps (10:17): Join us anytime you'd like. All right, awesome. So now you're going to get down to really go into C CS. So what's on your agenda for the rest of the event to see as much as we possibly can. You know, we've been really privileged to walk around this startup area and that's been cool and can't wait to go compare it to some of the larger, more established companies. I hear Google's here, I believe I heard Facebook might be here and there's Sony. So I'm curious to see where those companies are going and compare it to what our startups are doing. Cause you know in many cases I think our startups will have the edge. All right. I believe that totally. You have been visiting with Jennifer Capps who is member of the senior leadership over at the North Carolina state university entrepreneurship program and we're of course Trade Show Live on the Road at CES 2020. Thanks for joining me Jennifer. Jennifer Capps (11:05): Well thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast. Matt Kruea (11:09): Thanks for listening to Trade Show Live on the Road, a production of The Trade Show Manager, a trade show consulting firm. If you need innovative programs to engage attendees, exhibitors and sponsors, custom research or new solutions for your trade show, contact The Trade Show Manager on our website, The Trade Show Manager.com.

In this episode, we answer questions for our community about having children, birth control, how many kids to have and more.Please also take a moment and download our free 52 Date Night Ideas eBook.http://datenightideas.com PRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for the gift and blessing of children. Thank you for creating and designing us with the ability to recreate, what an incredible miracle life truly is. We thank you for the opportunity to build our family and have children. We pray for others who either have not had children yet or in awaiting their first in anticipation. May you lead them in the way you desire them to walk and to grow together. We praise you for all those who have children and we also pray for those who can’t have children for whatever the reason may be. You are sovereign and we trust you. We continue to surrender our hearts to you as you lead us in parenting and raising our children to know you. Please help us with our fears and insecurities. Please remind us every day of the purpose we have with our family. May your name be glorified.In Jesus’ name, amen! READ FULL TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. - [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. - [Aaron] And today we're gonna answer some of your questions about having children. - [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. - [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. - [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. - [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. - [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. - [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry onlinae for over seven years through blogging and social media. - [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. - [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. - [Aaron] Love. - [Jennifer] And Power. - [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. - [Jennifer] Together. - [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chased boldly after God's will for our life together. - [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Hey, everyone welcome back to another episode of Marriage After God. We're happy to be with you and we're really excited about this episode, and just being able to answer your questions. So doing Q&As is gonna be just an awesome new feature of the podcast where every couple of weeks, we're gonna poll our trusty community on Instagram and ask you guys what questions you have, and hopefully get some answers, well I should say opinions. - [Aaron] Yeah 'cause we have all the answers. - [Jennifer] No. - [Aaron] On everything. - [Jennifer] We don't but you know what, we're happy to explore these questions with you. And so thank you to everyone who shared these questions with us, and specifically about about having kids which we have a little bit of experience with. And so we'll dive into that in just a bit. All right, so one thing that we really are excited to share with you guys is that we have a new freebie for all of you. - [Aaron] So everyone has already did the free prayer challenge. - [Jennifer] Right. - [Aaron] They already got the date night conversations. - [Jennifer] You better, we've been sharing about those two for a while. So I begged Aaron, and I was like, "Let's do something new. "We've gotta do something new." - [Aaron] So this one is date night ideas. It's a free download. It's a list of 52 date night ideas which you could do one a week for the whole year. - [Jennifer] So is this something we're committing to? We're gonna go through all of these and do them? - [Aaron] Sure. - [Jennifer] Let's do it. - [Aaron] Let's see how it goes. - [Jennifer] I think that would be so fun. - [Aaron] So if you wanna get this freebie, this download, you just go to datenightideas.com and you can download our free ebook with 52 date night ideas. - [Jennifer] And the goal is one a week but if you can't do one week, do three a week. It's fine-- - [Aaron] If you have to do one a day, you know what, you can get done faster-- - [Jennifer] Have fun with it. - [Aaron] And just do it all over again. - [Jennifer] Have fun with it. No, but you can use these whenever you want and you can even sift through them and pull from it. - [Aaron] You know what would be fun is if they downloaded this and then found another couple to do a challenge with. How many they can get done in a year? - [Jennifer] Interesting, the other thing you could do is print them out and cut them out and stick them in a jar and pull them out randomly. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] That would be fun. - [Aaron] That's a great idea. Datenightideas.com, one word and it's free. Go get it, so the topic we're talking about, these Q&As, they're all on a similar topic. We polled our followers on Instagram and many of the questions were around children. Having children, children after marriage. - [Jennifer] So we're like let's stick them all in one episode so we can hit them all at once. - [Aaron] And so we're just gonna, some of these we're gonna wing answering. If we don't have good answers, we might say we don't know. We're not afraid to say we don't know. - [Jennifer] And just keep in mind that these are just our positions on these questions. How we would answer them based off of our experience and knowledge and-- - [Aaron] And things that we know of the Bible. - [Jennifer] Things that we know of the Bible and what we believe in so-- - [Aaron] Take it for what it is. - [Jennifer] Yeah and thank you guys again for asking these questions and sharing them with us and we really appreciate that. If you wanna jump on board for the next Q&A, just follow along on Instagram @marriageaftergod. - [Aaron] And you can always send us your questions in a message and we may not answer it in the message but we'll take down the question and potentially answer it in a future Q&A episode. We'd love to get those from you. So why don't we just jump right in to the first question and this is a doozy I feel like 'cause it's controversial, it could be. - [Jennifer] It could be yeah. - [Aaron] And they ask us their question and they said, our view on birth control. - [Jennifer] So what's your view on birth control? - [Aaron] That's a good question. - [Jennifer] It's a big question. - [Aaron] Okay, next question is, no I'm just kidding. Our view on birth control. - [Jennifer] Let me share my point of view first. - [Aaron] Okay, go ahead. - [Jennifer] I'll just be honest. I went on birth control 'cause that's what I heard you do when you get married. And so I went on the month before I got married and I chose to go off of it a month after we were married. So I was on it for a total of two months and I got married at 21, you were 22. And we were so excited married and so excited to-- - [Aaron] Be with each other physically. - [Jennifer] Yeah, experience what sex was like and it was awful. I'm just gonna be honest. It was very painful for me and so I scrambled, you guys. I tried to figure out why is my body responding this way because it was my body that was keeping us from experiencing-- - [Aaron] Physical intimacy. - [Jennifer] Healthy, physical intimacy. And so one of the things that came to my mind was something that was super obvious because over the course of that month of being married, not only were we having these issues but I gained a lot of weight. I got acne. - [Aaron] There was a lot of things going on. There was emotional stuff. - [Jennifer] Emotional ups and downs and mood swings and it was awful and I didn't feel myself. And so the obvious question then is what happened in the last few weeks that has changed me? - [Aaron] Other than getting married. - [Jennifer] I know it's a big transition. - [Aaron] I that that guy you married can make you feel crazy, I get it. - [Jennifer] But we narrowed it down to birth control and so I chose to go off of it and I haven't regretted it. - [Aaron] And it didn't fix everything but it did actually drastically change your mood. - [Jennifer] And some of the physical things that I was-- - [Aaron] Some of the physical things you were experiencing. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] So that's an experience you had with birth control. We know tons of people use birth control. I also know that there is certain people that say birth control is a sin. I'm not gonna go that far. I'm not gonna make statements like that. What I will say is I'm not an advocate for opting to put a chemical in your body to adjust and manipulate how your body is naturally meant to work. So that's my, you're meant to do a certain thing. Your body has been created to do a certain thing and birth control is meant to stop that thing from happening, to manipulate the way your body responds to certain things and I don't think that's great. We have a lot of stuff going on this world. A lot of sickness, a lot of problems and for us to be healthy and to do something like that to our healthy body, I don't think is very wise, personally. - [Jennifer] So just to clarify for those listening, you're not saying that you won't put anything on or in your body that helps stimulate positive things to happen in your body. You're saying, you wouldn't do something that would stop the natural function of your body. - [Aaron] I'm saying I don't think it's a good idea to put something in our bodies electively to stop the natural. - [Jennifer] That alters the natural. - [Aaron] Yeah 'cause there's, again, I'm not gonna. The question is about all the other things that happen in this life, we know taking things when you're sick. - [Jennifer] I was gonna say there's supplements and there's oils and there's things that are out there. - [Aaron] Right, that's different than I'm gonna take this birth control to stop my ovulation so that we don't get pregnant. I'm not gonna do that. That's just my personal perspective on this. And to be honest, there's most things like medically that I'm a little hesitant on just because I like to stay mostly natural as much as possible. But this is about birth control. I'm just saying that taking a woman's body, putting something in it to stop her from doing what it's naturally meant to do doesn't sound wise to me. Now on the spiritual side of things, we have to always ask ourselves the question of why are we trying to stop ourselves from having kids? Why are we trying to protect against that? And there's tons of worldly wisdom that we receive on why we should wait and what, there's this and that. And don't you wanna travel? Why don't you establish your marriage first? And none of those things line up with the things that we hear about in scripture about children being a blessing. That it's good for women to have children. People prayed when they were barren because they wanted children and all these positive. It's positive, positive, positive but our generation and the last couple of generations has heard the message of negative. Children are a hindrance. Children get in the way. Children are difficult, they're expensive. They're hard, some of these things are all true. Not all of them but some of these things are true but not in the sense of they're not a blessings. Not in the sense of we shouldn't do it. I think we should always be asking ourselves about our heart posture towards children because God's heart posture towards children from the words of Jesus. "Let the children come to me", that's what he said. - [Jennifer] I love that, that's so beautiful. - [Aaron] Don't hinder the children. - [Jennifer] That's really good. I was gonna say that personally, we think that it needs to be thoughtfully considered not just in its physical impact on someone's body but its spiritual impact. And I think you just hit it on the head with being a heart posture. - [Aaron] Absolutely. - [Jennifer] And asking ourselves why. - [Aaron] Yeah and what do we believe about God? Is he good? Does it give us good things? And has he made us a certain way? And yeah those are all true. So we don't believe in birth control, the chemical form. I would say do any form of birth control, and we're about to have our number five so everyone can logically find out, we don't do birth control. We would probably lean towards just what's it called? The rhythm method? - [Jennifer] Natural planning. - [Aaron] Natural planning. And again, that's not even perfect. It's more of to our own abilities, we're just gonna try and plan around this and if God gives us a child, we're gonna be stoked. - [Jennifer] Yeah, all right let's move on to number two. Okay number two says, what made you wait to have kids? - [Aaron] Made us is a good word because half of it was physical. - [Jennifer] I was gonna say this is a two parter for us. - [Aaron] We just talked about how we couldn't have sexual intimacy. - [Jennifer] Yup. - [Aaron] So it was not impossible but highly unlikely 'cause it was . - [Jennifer] We weren't doing the thing that makes the babies. - [Aaron] Yeah, the thing that makes the babies wasn't happening so there was no babies being made. And then the second part of that is, and this might have been out of a bitterness because we couldn't be with each other. I have feeling that some of it was from that bitterness but also some of it just straight from our own selfish pride. We would tell people, they would ask us when are you guys gonna have kids? And we'd be like, oh we're not gonna have kids for a while or maybe ever because we're too selfish. - [Jennifer] We like sleeping in. - [Aaron] We like traveling. We like this, we like that. We said these things out loud. This isn't thoughts we had. - [Jennifer] And I would agree. Some of it was probably just to give them an answer 'cause we weren't gonna straight dig into well, we can't have sex. So we found a different way to answer it but I think at the core, we truly believe those things as well. We were selfish. - [Aaron] I remember I would pridefully say it like it was something to boast about. - [Jennifer] Looking back-- - [Aaron] You are too selfish. - [Jennifer] Looking back that's so embarrassing. - [Aaron] I know what a fool I was that I would actually say that. God's looking at me at like I know who you are. - [Jennifer] I love you Aaron. - [Aaron] I was like a little child to him and he's patient with me, thank God. But what a fool that I would just boast about my selfishness which is opposed to God, to be selfish. I was literally boasting about my opposition to God. - [Jennifer] I wanted to share a little bit about this question. What came to my mind is well the physical. We couldn't and the selfish but I was also really terrified of having children and I don't remember it being a super affirmed thing growing up. And even though I came from a big family, it wasn't like I had this dream to have a big family myself. - [Aaron] And it wasn't like children are good. Children are a blessing. All you saw was there's all of this chaos at home sometimes. - [Jennifer] Yeah, so I remember just being really scared about having children. And so I was actually okay with not having children for a long time if any. I didn't have a hearts desire to have children. - [Aaron] And I actually, now you bring that up. I remember specifically a thought I had and I had it regularly was I didn't want children because we couldn't be together. All I thought I was like yeah that would be so perfect. We'd get pregnant the one time we do come together and then now like we couldn't enjoy each other, and now we have a kid. This totally negative connotation on having children because it was just gonna get in the way of the thing I wanted. - [Jennifer] Yeah and I think we talked about that even back then. Something that I didn't talk to you about that I really struggled with was the thought that if in that turmoil, those first three years if we did have a kid how much more it would tie me to you which is really depressing and sad to think about. I just am broken-hearted over those kinds of thoughts now. - [Aaron] But that's when we were in our sinful hearts. - [Jennifer] But that's where I was and I didn't have hope in our marriage. I truly believe that we're coming to the end so it was like I have to make sure even more that I don't get pregnant which was avoiding you. - [Aaron] Which made the whole thing worse. - [Jennifer] Yeah, it was a mess, you guys. - [Aaron] The devil is good at what he does. And it's why we have to resist him and it's why we have to put on the full armor of God 'cause these thoughts and things will come if we're not focused right. - [Jennifer] Now I have a part of this question to ask you. It has to do with this question, that's not here but would you have waited if you could have sex? - [Aaron] Back then? Well probably 'cause again I had my selfish heart of I thought tons of horrible things. I was thinking about your body and I was thinking about our sex, and I was thinking about being inconvenience with now I have to raise a child, and we're doing all these things. So absolutely, I think back then, selfishly would have waited. Not because I thought it was wise but because I didn't want to have to deal with it. - [Jennifer] Okay and I was thinking more like answering now having had children. - [Aaron] No, I wished we didn't have waited. - [Jennifer] I like that you're answering really honestly. - [Aaron] No, if I knew what I know now. - [Jennifer] I wouldn't have waited. - [Aaron] We'd have a 13-year-old. - [Jennifer] That's weird to think about. - [Aaron] How incredible would that be? We'd have a teenager. - [Jennifer] Wow, lots more growth opportunities for us. - [Aaron] No, I wouldn't have waited at all but to be honest it's God's sovereignty. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] He knew who we were. Our sin kept us away from it and it's probably better back then because we had some maturing to do. Not that I'm telling anyone they should choose to wait. I just think God knew what he was doing and he let us through a lot of stuff to grow us and make us into the men and women he wanted us to be. - [Jennifer] Yeah, all right. Number three, do you think numbering your children is necessary? - [Aaron] Yeah, I'd give a 10 to Elliott and then like all if I give-- - [Jennifer] What are you talking about? - [Aaron] I'm just kidding. Numbering, I'm thinking like . - [Jennifer] That's not what they're asking. - [Aaron] Numbering, the question is about should we have one, two, three, how many should we have? - [Jennifer] I was gonna change the question to what we usually get is what number do you guys want or what are you looking for? Because we do get asked that. - [Aaron] Yeah and it's usually with this like are you done yet look. Do you realize how many you have? We know exactly how many we have. So the question is do you think numbering your children is necessary? And I'm imagining the heart but it is do you think it's important to consider how many children we're having? Should we only have one or two or three? That's a pretty common thought. Most of the time, it comes in the form of, we only one, two or three. That's where that comes from. So Jennifer, do you think it's necessary. That's how the question is phrased. - [Jennifer] No, I don't think it's necessary. I don't think that we need to have a set number and we personally don't have a set number. - [Aaron] Our answer when someone asks, how many do you want is whatever God wants. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] Because to be honest, I don't know. - [Jennifer] To couple with that though, I do think that there's wisdom in every situation and so what I like to say is we take every pregnancy as it comes. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] Submit it to the Lord-- - [Aaron] And in between the pregnancies, we submit those to the Lord as well. - [Jennifer] Yeah, and you know what, it's a journey of walking with God saying God I trust you and it's not easy but-- - [Aaron] And I'll say this. - [Jennifer] He's doing this. - [Aaron] I'm gonna be a little candid here. There was a challenge after we had was it? - [Jennifer] Elliot. - [Aaron] Elliot and we went right back to that place in our hearts of we don't want any more. Elliot was difficult. It was our first child. - [Jennifer] He had colic. - [Aaron] He had colic for a couple months. - [Jennifer] I had nursing issues. - [Aaron] It was really difficult. And we just were like no, we can't do this any more. This is crazy, we are also-- - [Jennifer] Honestly-- - [Aaron] Publishing a book and we're thinking like how we're gonna do all this stuff and have another baby and everything was coming together. - [Jennifer] When I look back on it too, I don't remember it being a negative feeling. I just remember being okay with it being one. - [Aaron] We're like, we're fine. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] But again from all selfish positions. How are we gonna keep doing these things? That was too hard, I don't wanna do that again. And we were challenged by someone really hard and I'm gonna just explain to you what was challenging to us, and I'm gonna leave it at that. And they came to us and we were just sharing our hearts with them. And they very softly and gently said, you know the reasoning that you were coming to with this deciding not to want any more. And he brought up, is like it's usually for Christians, we say things like we want one, some or none. And it's like that sounds great. It sounds wise. One summer night, I'm gonna choose the size of my family. I think that's wise based off of whatever. Then they said that's very similar to the reasoning that pro-choicers have. It's your choice. Christians aren't gonna choose the abortion option right, hopefully. That's where the heart of a Christian shouldn't be that direction at all. We don't do that. But one, some or none is very similar and it's my choice. Pro-choice, I get to choose what I want. And he's explaining this to us and it cut us to the heart, and we realize wow, we're telling God, who's in charge of this area of our life. We want God to be sovereign in every area of our life except for this one. And so when they were explaining to us that we were essentially making decisions very similar to the idea of pro-choice. It's our choice and I want it to be pro-me whatever I want. And it really challenged us and it actually made us go and pray and dig into what we believed about children, and what we believed about our family, what God wants for us. - [Jennifer] I remember shortly after that conversation maybe even walking out of the restaurant, I told you that as I was sitting there listening, I could picture myself holding my hand shut tight and it was me as a Christian telling God, you are sovereign, you have every part of my life. I love you, lead me oh but you can't have this over here. - [Aaron] Don't touch this over here. - [Jennifer] And I was gripping it so tightly and I remember explaining this picture to you and just saying I feel like God wants me to open up my hands and trust Him. And I feel like we got pregnant about a week and a half later. - [Aaron] Yeah really quick. - [Jennifer] Really quick. - [Aaron] And I'll say this. It's easy to say, hard to do. Every single pregnancy we've had to go to God and say God, we need your help. We need to trust you more. We need to know what you have for us because it's difficult. Pregnancy is difficult. Children are difficult. It's just part of life so it's not like all of a sudden everything became rainbows and unicorns. It was like we have to trust God every single time which is what he wants. And then I'll say this as gently as possible 'cause I know the person that asked this question. I'm not trying-- - [Jennifer] There's a lot of people out there that asked. - [Aaron] There's a lot of people who have this question. I think the question is irrelevant and here's why I say that. You can say I want three kids and God only give you two. Is God wrong? Nope, I God bad? No. - [Jennifer] You could want two kids and never be able to conceive. - [Aaron] You could want one kid and never be able to conceive. You could want whatever you want. We could desire whatever we want. We can have this picture for our life and it's so perfect that oh if we just had a boy and a girl, you have six girls. I know people like that, okay. You could say lots of things. - [Jennifer] You can say you don't want any kids and then get pregnant. - [Aaron] We know people that are on birth control and I've gotten pregnant. We know people that have been barren for years. - [Jennifer] And have gotten pregnant. - [Aaron] And then have gotten pregnant. We know people that have had their tubes tied and then unfortunately have still gotten pregnant and had to have surgery because of the dangers of that. - [Jennifer] We also know the word of God and in Psalms when it talks about God knitting together a baby, a human inside a mother's womb, we know that's true. So it's from Him. - [Aaron] What we wanna do is we wanna say instead of asking well how many do we want? What's wrong with saying, God how many do you want? What do you want our family to look like? How do you want us to shape our family? You could say you want two children, right? And you have those two children and you stop, and there's no way for you to know that that third child was gonna be another Moses, another David. You don't know what God wants for you. So that's why I think that question is a little irrelevant because you think you have control. - [Jennifer] This is what the question should be. Do we trust what you have for us Lord? - [Aaron] Yeah and if that's a zero, and that doesn't mean that doesn't come with heartbreak but if it's zero, then God gets to choose that. If it's one, then God gets to choose that. Me and Jennifer are on number five and this could literally be our last child. We have no way of knowing. Something would happen. We could just not get pregnant again. Things happen or we could have another five. I don't know. But we want to trust the Lord with everything. I wanna encourage you to do the same. Whether that's zero, one, two, three, five, 10. That's the question we should be asking. Number four, what's the best way to prepare for or not be fearful of having a newborn? This is a good one 'cause we're literally right there. - [Jennifer] Yeah and you know what fear is a natural thing and it always comes with that feeling of I don't know what's on the other side of labor, or delivery, or having a newborn, and I struggled with all those fears. But when I look back and I think about my first baby, holding him in my arms, it's the most beautiful, miraculous thing I can think of. - [Aaron] And you don't necessarily look back and dwell on the pain. - [Jennifer] No. - [Aaron] You know it's there. - [Jennifer] I know it happened. - [Aaron] You look back and we think about those-- - [Jennifer] The joy and the love and the incredible miracle that comes with having a child. And I think that we should also just note that this probably whoever asked this question is going to give birth to a baby but I think even for adoption. When you think of the other ways that people build their families. I think there's a lot of fear that comes. A lot of fearful thoughts that could come with the unknowns but we just wanna be an encouragement to you guys that you're not alone. God is with you and do everything in prayer. The Bible tells us to pray without ceasing, to pray constantly. - [Aaron] To pray for everything. - [Jennifer] To pray for everything and to be thankful. And so I think the first way that I would respond to this question is pray, and pray with your spouse. Pray together over your family and over every situation. - [Aaron] Present those fears to the Lord and say Lord, here's some things I'm afraid of. Give me peace, give me your peace. That's what he tells us to pray for everything. With thanksgiving, lift your request to Lord. - [Jennifer] And the other thing I would say is meditate on his Word. What does God say about children? What does God say about birth? What does God say about families? Things that comes to my mind is John 16:21. It says, "When a woman is giving birth, "she has sorrow because her hour has come "but when she has delivered the baby, "she no longer remembers the anguish "for joy that a human being has been born into the world." That's what I remember. - [Aaron] That's an awesome statement by the way. For joy that a human being has been born. That's so cool and it is true because the pain is real. It's a thing you get to experience. You can talk about that in a second about experiencing the pain but you remember the joy of that child, holding the baby, seeing their face for the first time hearing their coos for the first time. - [Jennifer] I know I said this. It's miraculous, it truly is. - [Aaron] Yeah and seeing them grow up is miraculous too. I can't imagine my life without any of these kids. - [Jennifer] I know and I feel so grateful that the Lord trusted me and gave me these gifts. It's so wonderful. Another verse that comes to my mind and something good to dwell on is Psalm 127:3. It says, "Behold children are a heritage from the Lord. "The fruit of the womb, a reward." - [Aaron] So preparing yourself for having a newborn is you're preparing to have a reward and to build a heritage that he's giving you. That's really cool. - [Jennifer] A good resource for becoming new parents, you should check out "Redeeming Childbirth" by Angie Tolpin. It was just a really good book to bring perspective to having children and what that looks like biblically. So if you wanna check that out just go to courageousmom.com. One last thing that I just wanna encourage you guys with, and this you can do prior to having your first baby but you should also be doing it throughout parenting, and that's just talking about those fears with your spouse whenever they come up. And using those opportunities to encourage one another. If the wife is afraid, the husband can go to the word of God and console her and comfort her and encourage her. If the husband has some fears and he's being vulnerable about them, she can encourage him through the word of God and through prayer, and I just think that is so vital for us to be one in the way that we are experiencing the same thing, right parenthood. And another thing you could do is find someone who you admire, who has experience that you can ask questions to. I know as a new mom, I had so many questions. I still have so many questions. And so finding someone who you can be in communication with even if it's just a quick text or if you can get into community with several people who you can have questions too, and really just have that support system. It's really important - [Aaron] Yeah and that actually leads into our last question, number five really well. This person asked us if we can talk about the best ways to invest in our spouse before having kids. - [Jennifer] Okay. - [Aaron] Which is a cool thing because we could have done this. - [Jennifer] I know we did this for, no, we should have been doing this for years. The first thing that comes to my mind is having regular date nights and when you don't have kids and you're married, it can be so easy to just make everything feel like a date because you're with each other but making it significant somehow. - [Aaron] Getting it on the calendar, making it a regular occurrence. - [Jennifer] And doing something out of the norm, right? So like if you guys regularly already do something together, don't consider that your date. Go do something else. - [Aaron] Yeah, and what's good about that is it puts you into a really healthy pattern and habit so that after the kids, you guys will long and be like, hey, we need to get back on track. - [Jennifer] Not after the kids are grown and raised, you mean after having kids. - [Aaron] I'm saying after six weeks of healing and getting better. You guys are like, hey, we need to get back on schedule with our date nights, that's important. And for awhile, you're gonna have the baby with you and then eventually you'll get a baby sitter. But you start that up and it's there. It's existing. - [Jennifer] And just to encourage you guys, we've gone on dates with babies before and it can be done. - [Aaron] Just find those restaurants that-- - [Jennifer] Are really loud. - [Aaron] Either really loud or mostly full of older couples 'cause they love seeing young couples with their babies. - [Jennifer] Most of the times. - [Aaron] Most of the times. - [Aaron] Some restaurants don't like it but the experience we've had, we have people come up and be like, oh, your baby's so wonderful. This is so cool seeing a couple with children now. Anyways that's a good tip. For the husband's preparing your spouse before kids just doing what a Ephesians five says, "Washing your wife with the Word." Continually speaking God's truth into her life over her reminding her what the word of God says, reminding of her of who she is, what she's capable of, how God made her and building her up because those are the things that are gonna continually give her confidence. Make her feel like she can be a mom that she can handle pregnancy and labor and that she is going to be a victor in that area. So it's immensely powerful the words that a husband speaks over her life which is why we're commanded to wash our wives with not any words but the Word. With God's Word, reminding her of who she is, what God's doing in her life. That the thing that she's going to do. Having a child is such a powerful and beautiful thing that as she disciples that child, she's literally making world changers. Growing the Kingdom of Heaven within your home. It's a powerful thing. - [Jennifer] That's awesome, I love that. Another thing that I would say and this is something to continually do throughout your marriage, but to get really good at it is practicing transparency. Aaron and I talk about this a lot and it's something that I feel like we were actually pretty good at in our marriage but could have been even better way sooner at, and that's just being transparent and honest with one another when you're struggling with sin. You confess that you repent. When you're wrestling with insecurities or doubt or frustrations, you talk about it and you find a way if you're at conflict with one another, you reconcile. All those really important-- - [Aaron] Getting better at those things. - [Jennifer] Communication things. - [Aaron] Which will be huge for your children to see and to benefit from. - [Jennifer] And your parenting because there's gonna be a lot of situational things that come up that you'll have to be transparent with one another in and talk about so that you're on the same page when you parent. - [Aaron] Which leads into the other thing, and this is hugely important. Overcoming sin and bad habits. So for the husbands, if you guys are struggling with pornography, and you think it's just like not a big deal. And you're like, oh it's every once in a while. Just realize what you do, you're gonna teach your children. And I wish I would have known that earlier. I wish I would have recognized the the magnitude of walking in what I saw as hidden sin or things that I was getting a handle on. But it's just every once in awhile, it's not that big of a deal, minimizing those things. Maximize them, take those things in your life and say no, I need to get this out of my life. I'm not gonna smoke any more. I'm not gonna show my kids that habit. The way I eat. The hidden sins of my life, pornography. The way I talk. If you have issue with bad language. Those are things that you're gonna teach your kids and so work on it. Confess them, find freedom from them. Walk in the freedom that Christ has already given us on the cross and walk in it so that you can teach your kids to walk in it. The same freedom. - [Jennifer] Have authority in their lives. - [Aaron] Yeah as a pastor once told me, purity is power. Walking in purity is powerful. Say that last line right there, babe. - [Jennifer] I just put a note on here. Have children, because the question was how do you invest in your spouse before having kids. - [Aaron] Which can be-- - [Jennifer] It could be any range of things. It could maybe you're already pregnant and you're just waiting for the baby to come but it could also be we chose not to have kids right now, so what can we be doing? Well I'll tell you what, if there's one thing in Aaron's and I life that has stimulated growth in our relationship-- - [Aaron] That God's used to sanctify us in huge ways. - [Jennifer] Absolutely, or to just grow closer to each other in opportunities in ways that we never would have known or experienced, it was through having children. And so I've really appreciated that about our journey and where we've been, and so hopefully that just encourages you guys. - [Aaron] Those are five questions that we received from the community. Again we're not the end-all be-all to these answers but we try the best of our ability to look at the word of God, to look at experience and see how God is trying to change the way we think about things. - [Jennifer] I'll say this, answering the questions is not easy for me. I'm a peacemaker and I don't wanna ruffle anyone's feathers or ever put things out there that make people feel uncomfortable, but at the same time I want you guys to know where Aaron and I are on some of these topics because you're you're listening in, you're following us. And for whatever reason, God has trusted us with an opportunity to share these with you. And so I hope that through our experience and through the things that we have shared with you today, if anything, you get to go back to the table with your own spouse and talk about them, and share your own perspectives, and thoughts behind them. And we just encourage you to, like Aaron said, get in the scriptures and dive into what God has to say about these and let that be the foundation for what you believe and your your viewpoints and your perspectives on some of these topics. - [Aaron] 1 John tells us to test every spirit and to discern. So don't just take what we're saying as pure gold. Go yourself to the word of God and find them out. But if you're not willing to go to the word of God, and you just wanna disagree and have your own opinion, you have to understand something that we're not called to just do that. We're called to trust the word of God. And so I wanna challenge you if you are in that place, go to word of God. Take the things we've said and go dig in. Find out what God thinks about all these questions. What God thinks about children in the womb and raising children. You find out for yourself and come up with your own conclusions based off of what the word of God says, not off of what we say. But we love you, and as always win in prayer so please join us. - [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift and blessing of children. Thank you for creating and designing us with the ability to recreate. What an incredible miracle life truly is. We thank you for the opportunity to build our family and have children. We pray for others to either have not had children yet or are in waiting their first in anticipation. May you lead them in a way you desire them to walk and to grow together. We praise you for all those who have children and we pray also for those who can't have children for whatever reason maybe. You are sovereign and we trust you. We continue to surrender our hearts to you as you lead us in parenting and raising our children to know you. Please help us with our fears and insecurities. Please remind us every day of the purpose we have with our family. May your name be glorified in Jesus' name, amen. - [Aaron] Amen. And guys as always, I just wanna invite you to leave us a review, a star rating. We love those. They're incredibly powerful and effective in spreading the word about the podcast. We love you all and we pray that you guys would just grow closer to God and you chase his will for your life and get his heart on the matter of children. See you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com. And let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier is an author, former midwife, functional medicine doctor, and creator of the Mercier Therapy. When she was in college, Jennifer was on the path towards becoming a RE. After working at the local fertility clinic, she realized that there was another way to help women become pregnant. So Jennifer followed her heart to massage therapy school and created the Mercier Therapy. Jennifer has helped women conceive children all over the world through her practice. You guys are going to LOVE HER! In this episode you will learn about: What is Mercier Therapy Why you should think about scar tissue in your pelvic region if you’re trying to conceive How to prepare for a medically assisted fertility program Resources: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.jennifer.mercier/ Mercier Therapy Website: https://www.merciertherapy.com/ Dr. Jennifer Mercier’s Practice: https://www.expectamiracle.life/

Altered Population is an investigation into filicide in South Carolina hosted by Jennifer Wells. In today’s episode of Altered Population, Jennifer travels to Lexington County for the Jones’ trial only to find out that it has been delayed. She corresponds with Harrison Cahill throughout the week to eventually paint him into a corner so that she can get the public documents she requested. Jennifer uses the quiet time in Lexington to dig back into the Smith case, where Harrison Cahill makes another appearance, and she discusses the importance of searching for nuance and letting people’s true stories be known. Jennifer analyzes Susan’s handwriting as one of those nuances to describe her mental state. Before heading out to Lexington County, Jennifer describes how she learned about the Public Index that would have allowed her to search the court records of pending and closed cases. Instead she used the standard form on the county website, which wasn’t very detailed and resulted in her not receiving any of the official documents she requested. She confirmed the court date on the phone with Harrison Cahill and set out to Lexington County, which was a four-hour drive from home. Upon arrival, Jennifer realized she’d been played and that the court date she was given was incorrect. On top of that she had been denied the press credentials she had requested. Instead of marching into Cahill’s office, furious that he’d lied to her, she sat through four hours of jury selection to calm her nerves. Jennifer explains how she finds the whole process fascinating, and how she witnessed it by being mistaken for a law student. The process started with roll call, each person giving his or her juror number, name, occupation, and marital status. Afterwards Jennifer talked to the bailiff and explained how she was actually waiting for the Jones trial, and he told her he wasn’t surprised it was delayed again. So Jennifer emailed Cahill back, who informed her that there was no steadfast date set for the trial. She proceeded to email him about the gag order and to find out who asked for it, so that she wouldn’t violate it. After backing Cahill into a corner, Jennifer got the public records she asked for less than 24 hours later from Frick. It didn’t make up for the incorrect court date, but she made the best of the down time and dug into her other cases. She started with Susan Smith’s old mug shot, which wasn’t what she imagined. She had dark sleek hair, looking quite normal. Jennifer found a letter from Smith to Cahill. Cahill had spoken about Susan Smith’s case and how he wrote her a letter to ask why she did it in order to understand her better, in the hopes of preventing these things in the future. Susan wrote back to Cahill to tell him that she didn’t receive his request for information. She explained that she was not the monster society that society believes her to be. She said she was a good mother and something just went horribly wrong on that night. Susan also expressed that she’d be interested in speaking to Cahill at a later date. Jennifer explains how she analyzes handwriting, in reference to Susan’s letter to Cahill, and how the way a person dots their i’s says a lot about them. If the dots are right above, the person might be very organized and detail-oriented. If the dots are to the left, then they’re likely a procrastinator. If the i’s are dotted with oversized circles the person could be childlike. Susan had dotless i’s, which could be a sign of confusion or lack of attention. It’s the details and nuances, like her handwriting, that will help fill in the gaps about Susan Smith. KEY TAKEAWAYS WITH TIMESTAMPS01:16 How to fill out a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request04:30 The thing Jennifer was most embarrassed about08:00 The moment that Jennifer realized she was lied to11:23 How Jennifer blended into the court house during jury selection13:30 The selection jury process17:32 How Jennifer deciphered emails to track down public information19:16 Research into gag orders, FOIA orders, and South Carolina social services20:19 Jennifer’s emails to and from Cahill to ask about the gag order23:05 Is it a secret trial?25:36 How Jennifer reframed the incorrect court date and time in Lexington County27:15 Smith’s note to Harrison Cahill28:41 Harrison Cahill’s LinkedIn profile30:20 Cahill’s description of Susan Smith33:17 Susan’s letter back to Cahill34:25 There’s more to Susan’s story35:26 Why Jennifer believes it’s good Susan didn’t get the interview with Cahill36:33 The nuances needed to understand Susan37:26 Handwriting analysis40:15 Confusion in all the details41:16 Jennifer’s email reaching out in Greenville LINKS/RESOURCESRate, review, subscribe, and tell a friend about this podcast. New episodes will be posted every Monday. Follow us on Twitter: @altpopulationVisit our website at www.alteredpopulation.com If you have any information on this case, you are encouraged to contact the Greenville Police Cold Case Investigators at 864-467-5330 or Crime Stoppers at 864-23CRIME. Email the Cold Case Unit at coldcase@greenvillesc.gov

Jennifer Kucpcho won the first ever women's tournament to be held on the perfectly manicured greens of the Augusta National. It's been the venue for the prestigious Masters tournament since 1934 and remains one of the most exclusive clubs in the world of sport. Membership is by invitation only and restricted to just 300 at any given time. Even when, then first women member was admitted back in 2012 - the former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in case you were wondering - the thought of them playing a tournament there seemed fanciful in a sport not known for its inclusivity. So Jennifer can truly claim to be a history maker - winner of the first Augusta National Women's Amateur Championship - to give it the full title! She tells Shari Vahl what her achievement means for women's golf and how important momentum is not lost. There are less than 500 days to go until the 2020 Olympic Games and for Mohamed Sbihi, he is aiming to make history. The 31 year old is part of the Great Britain Rowing team who have their sights on a sixth consecutive gold medal. Sbihi himself is an Olympic champion and is the first Muslim to be included in the GB squad. He now holds out hope for others who could follow his example into rowing. We are in Spain for one of the fiercest competitive derbies in the La Liga. Real Betis play Sevilla on Saturday and we take you behind the scenes at Real Betis where you will hear the Chief Executive Jose Miguel Lopez Catalan who joined the club two years ago with no football experience. He has been telling the BBC about how important family and fans are to the football club. The Watford goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes is set to retire at the end of the season and what better way than to bow out playing in the FA Cup final against Manchester City next month.Gomes is seeking FA Cup heaven and in his own words, says, he plans to answer his 'call from Jesus' and become a pastor as well as a football agent. One man who has followed that path is former Chelsea midfielder Gavin Peacock - he's now nestled in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in Canada and he told Shari Vahl how he made the transition from football to being a pastor himself. The former England Rugby Union international Christian Wade joins us as his dream to the play in the NFL took a step closer this week. Picture - Jennifer Kupcho (Credit - Getty Images)

Order our new book today! Marriage After God: Chasing Boldly After God’s Purpose for Your Life Together https://marriageaftergod.com In this episode, we chat with Jerrad lopes and his wife about the place that the word of God should have in our life and marriage. A quote from Chapter 4 of Marriage After God “A marriage after God is one that is eager to allow the Word of God to transform them by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Dear Lord, Thank you for your word! It is living and it is active, sharper than any 2 edged sword. Lord, you created everything by your word, and faith comes by hearing your word. You tell us that man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of your mouth. We pray that as husbands and wives who love you and are chasing after you, that we would be men and women of your word. That we would make it a priority in our lives. That we would read it and meditate on it. That it would be our sustenance. That we would allow ourselves to be transformed by it and renewed by it. May our marriages be transformed by it. We pray that our lives would represent what your word says. We pray that we would take the sword of the spirit which is your word and use it to fight against the schemes of the devil. Lord, your word is good and gift for everyone. May we read it, may we know it, and may we live it out daily. In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: [Aaron] Hey! We're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're in part four of the Marriage After God series and we're going to be talking with Jerrad and Laila Lopes about our relationship with the Bible. [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith everyday. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life [Aaron] love [Jennifer] and power [Aaron] That can only be found by choosing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Thank you guys so much for joining us today. We just want to take a moment and ask you to leave a review for the Marriage After God podcast. So if you've been encouraged by this podcast, if you want to support this podcast, that's just one great way that Aaron and I would love to invite you to do that. It's really quick. You just scroll down to the bottom of the app, leave a star-rating review or a comment review and we really appreciate that. [Aaron] And then the reason we're doing this 16 part series with all these interviews is because we're launching our book "Marriage After God" and we're excited to get it in your hands. And so if you want to take a moment and go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, either now or after the podcast, and pick up your copy of our new book. Jennifer and I wrote it. We wrote it for you and it's to encourage your marriage to chase boldly after Christ's plan and mission for your marriage. And so that's what this podcast is about and we're gonna be talking about Chapter 4 today with Jerrad and Laila Lopes. Welcome to the show guys. [Laila] Hello, thank you. [Aaron] We're so happy to have you guys. We've known you guys for quite a while now. How many years actually? [Jerrad] Uh [Laila] Probably three? [Aaron] Three years? [Jerrad] I think [Jennifer] Four? [Jerrad] Yeah, like three years now. [Aaron] We've met you guys once in person. We've been doing You guys have been doing the podcast thing way longer than us. Jerrad, you're from DadTired, the podcast and the website. [Jerrad] Yup. [Aaron] And so, you guys have helped us on our journey of podcasting and just, it's been awesome knowing you guys and so we're excited to interview you both. So before we get into the ice breaker question and the interview questions, why don't you just let us know who you are, what you guys do, children, marriage, all that. [Jerrad] Yeah, well first of all, super excited to be here. We are obviously big fans of you guys and what you guys are doing to help encourage marriages. So really really honored to be here. Laila and I have been married for nine years this last week. [Jennifer] Awesome, congratulations! [Laila] January 2019, it's nine years. [Jerrad] Thank you. So nine years. We have three little ones as we're building our team. We have a seven year old son named Elijah, a five year old girl named Eden, and a brand new baby girl named Ella. [Laila] Two months old. [Aaron] Congratulations. [Jennifer] Awesome. [Laila] Thank you. [Jennifer] I love that you said building your team. [Jerrad] Yeah, yeah. So we're super excited about it. We thought we were done with two but once we decided we're not, like, we're just like, [Jennifer] How many more can we have? [Jerrad] Yeah, let's just keep having lots of babies. [Aaron] You know, God's good like that. Just changes our hearts. [Jerrad] Yeah, yup, yup. Yeah so, we totally see children as a blessing and we're excited to keep the legacy moving on and the kingdom advancing through our family. So anyway, that's our family. I run a ministry called DadTired and Laila is a nurse, an oncology nurse at the hospital. [Aaron] Awesome. Well we are so excited to have you guys and we always have an ice breaker question and this is just a fun way to get our listeners to get to you know you guys, to get to know us, but the question is for you guys. If you could have a second honeymoon, what would it be? [Jerrad] Do you have an answer to that, babe? [Laila] Um, I actually quite liked our honeymoon. We went to Maui. I had never been to any of the Hawaiian islands and I really enjoyed that. I would probably re-do our wedding if we could do that. [Aaron] You can, can't you? [Laila] I'd take a second chance at that. [Jerrad] Our wedding was terrible. It was so bad. [Laila] It wasn't so bad. [Jerrad] I didn't like it at all. [Laila] Jerrad didn't like it. [Aaron] You like your marriage though, right? [Laila] Yeah, our marriage is good. The wedding was not us, that's all. [Jennifer] I always think that [Jarred] The thing is, Laila, Sorry to interrupt you, go ahead. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, I always think back to our wedding too and I think, well, Pinterest didn't really exist back then. So I think I would want to re-do it just for the sake of having my Pinterest board setup. [Aaron] Yeah, that's the problem. We didn't do know marriages, weddings looked like because we didn't have Pinterest, so. Well, we like. Laila and I met and then four months later were engaged [Jennifer] Wow. [Aaron] Nice. [Jarred] and six months after that were married and we didn't have a style yet. You know? We just didn't know each other very well, which is crazy to think about. And our friends didn't know each other that well yet and it really is a testament to God's grace and His hand on us, protecting us, because we really were still getting to know each other in so many ways. So anyway, now that we've obviously been in this for like a decade, we are like, alright, we would re-do it and invite more people or maybe different people. [Laila] It's just the style. It just wasn't really our, well we didn't have a style. We didn't have a "us" established yet because we were so, we had just met nine months prior to our wedding, but. [Jennifer] What about the honeymoon though? Would you do something different? [Jerrad] I'm geeking out on Southeast Asia right now, so I would do like two weeks in Vietnam, Thailand. [Jennifer] Aaron would love that. [Aaron] Yeah, I think we've known some people that have done that. And you could do the whole thing for like 500 bucks. [Jerrad] I know, I know. [Laila] It's a lot cheaper than Maui. [Aaron] Awesome. So Jennifer, why don't you give the quote from our chapter, this chapter, in the book and then we'll get into the topic. [Jennifer] So this is from chapter 4 of Marriage After God and it's titled, "Your Relationship with the Bible". It says, "A marriage after God is one that is eager to allow the word of God to transform them by the power of the Holy Spirit." [Jerrad] Nice. [Aaron] And so, this whole topic in this chapter is just, without the Bible, without our foundation there, without our hearts and minds in that thing, the very word of God, we won't know what we're supposed to be doing. We won't know how to know God and so we just wanted to talk with you guys today about our relationship as Christians with the Bible. And so, [Jennifer] Specifically your relationship with the Bible. [Aaron] Yeah, your relationship and then our prayer and hope is that the listeners would get inspired, would be encouraged, would be reminded of the importance and the vital place that the Bible has in our lives. That it is our faith, which is the word of God. So, you know, we'll just jump right in. So here is the first question. What is your current relationship with the Bible? And I know that's kind of a big question, but I just want to know, where does the Bible land in your life, as a married couple, as Christians, right now? [Laila] That's a good question. For me, it's been a bit of a journey. I didn't grow up a Christian at all. So I was really unfamiliar with it for the first 21 years of my life, actually. But after becoming a Christian, I was really in awe of the gospel and Jesus and that God loves me, as I had heard it, like, preached on Sundays. But I still, I actually wasn't interested in the Bible for a long time. My view of it was that it was, maybe just a collection of old stories or something. It just seemed really irrelevant. But now as a more mature Christian, I understand that it's actually, you know, as it says, the inspired word of God. Which I think makes it rather important. So I placed a much higher importance on reading it, learning it, and knowing what God's word says about himself specifically. [Jerrad] Yeah, and I would say for me, I grew up kind of opposite of Laila. I grew up going to church from the time I was just a young kid and so I remember learning the stories of God even as a child. But I think it wasn't until maybe, I don't know, seven, eight years ago where I started to realize, as you read the scriptures, that this isn't just a random book of stories but that there's actually a woven story in all of it of God redeeming everything back to himself and it's really this beautiful grand story and it became much more beautiful to me that this wasn't just like some stories where God was trying to get us to be more moral, behave better, but that He was actually telling a story about Himself and His relationship with His creation. So yeah, I think that's where we are now. [Jennifer] Awesome. So for everyone listening, just to encourage them, I like practical. I like to know what everybody else's routines look like so that I can look at my life and go, okay, what can I maximize here or there or do better. So what is digging into the word on a daily basis look like for you guys right now? What is, do you have some routines put in place? [Jerrad] Yeah. [Laila] Yeah we do. It's about to change a bit for me. I still work. I work two or three days a week usually and I commute about 45 minutes to an hour each way. So I use that time, just as a practical way to get into the Bible, I listen to it through some audible app or the Bible on audio and that's been really helpful. It's just a quiet time. You know, we have three kids including an infant. So there's not a lot of quiet time around here. But for me that's been really a helpful and practical way is just in my commute. [Aaron] That's a great tip. [Jerrad] Yeah, we use that. So last year we read through the Bible together from Genesis to Revelation and then we can kind of get into what that looked like practically if you think that that would be helpful. But this year, we are going through just the New Testament in a year and then next year we'll do the Old Testament in a year and then we'll cycle back through the whole Bible in a year. [Jennifer] I love that you guys are already looking ahead. Like, these are what our years look like. I just think that's so awesome. [Aaron] Yeah, and being prepared like that and having a plan, it does make it easier because you know where you guys are at and the whole family being on the same page makes it easier rather than, like well what am I gonna read today. You all know. You're like oh we're reading, you know, we're in John right now [Jennifer] Right. and we're on the same chapter and we're gonna talk about that later. [Jennifer] So could you guys share a little bit about that? Reading together as a couple. Not only how and when but how it makes you feel? [Jerrad] Yeah, I think, for us, like last year, when we read the Bible together front to back, we started out with really grand plans of sitting down and having an hour together a day and reading through the Bible together as a couple and with the family and journaling, and that just wasn't practical. It didn't work out that way. And so, we didn't want to give up on it. So we said, why don't we just keep doing this on our own as much as, like everyday we'll just read what the plan tells us to read, and then as many as times as we can do this together as husband and wife, let's do that. As many times as we can do it together as a family, let's do that. But we just didn't want to get behind and we wanted to be realistic with it. [Laila] If it came down to, should we just skip today because we can't read together, we didn't want to do that. So we just thought, you know, if we need to, we can still just make sure that we ourselves personally are filling up and then, as able, we'll get together. We did try and prioritize that, to read it together as a couple because it was really fun to see what stuck out to Jerrad and I think he enjoyed hearing what things stuck out to me. 'Cause sometimes it was different, sometimes it was exactly the same. But yeah, if it comes down to don't read at all because we're not reading it together or just get what we can when we can, then we just did it separately. [Jerrad] And the other thing is, so I travel a lot too for work and for speaking and stuff. So like [Laila] Yeah. [Jerrad] It was cool. And Laila works a few days a week. So it was cool to even know we were still reading the same thing. So even when I was on the road, we would still be doing phone calls and being like, what did you think of that passage today, what stuck out to you, or can you believe Paul said this, that was super convicting, you know? We were talking about it really organically all throughout the week and the year. [Jennifer] That's so cool. So I don't know if people are like me in this. But you guys talked about setting this goal of what you wanted it to look like and be like and then quickly realize that it wasn't practical and that you had to change things up or even go with the flow almost. And I know I have struggled with this in the past and really when it comes to anything in my relationship with Aaron, but you set these goals and when they don't happen like you want them too, I'm saying, I'm saying it as if it's not happening to me. But what I mean is I would get defeated or I would feel down and not want to move forward because it's not happening like I want it to. [Aaron] Yeah, like you failed. [Jennifer] Yeah, like I failed and so I think that this is just really encouraging to hear from you guys and to be reminded that goals are good and having expectations are okay as long as when you come up against them and things aren't working that people can still move forward and just change how it's being done. [Aaron] Yeah, so shift it quickly rather than just give up. [Jennifer] Exactly. [Laila] I would credit Jerrad for that because I am a bit like that if we've set a goal to read it together every day and now it's been two or three days and we haven't read it together then let's just quit, we'll start over next year and try again. But Jerrad's like, no it's okay. You have something you say about setting goals that I can't remember. [Aaron] What's that really good phrase you always say? [Laila] What's that good thing you say that is really helpful sometimes? [Jerrad] I have no idea. But what I do know is, as Christians, man, we can just get so caught up in being really rigorous and disciplined and we have to have our morning quiet time and we shame ourselves if we don't. But the point isn't that we read everyday as much as the point is that are we getting do know God, right? And that's like. Life happens. You might skip a day. You might like whatever. And obviously, it's cool to be disciplined and it's important. But even more important is are we getting to know God. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jerrad] If that ends up being a chapter a day, or a verse a day, or six chapters a day, whatever. Let's not forget what we're trying to do here and that's to get to know the God of ours. [Aaron] Yeah, I was gonna, this transitioned perfectly in what I was gonna bring up. Being marriages after God and chasing boldly after what He has for us and that He would use our marriages and knowing His word is the beginning of that because in knowing His word is knowing Him and what He wants, where He's going, what He loves, what He hates. And so I just wanted to ask you guys, because a lot of Christians could be listening to this and be like, okay they're talking about reading the Bible, everyone always talks about reading the Bible. Yeah it's important. I gotta read the Bible. I gotta pray. Those are the, quote on quote, Christian things to do. But it's so much more than that. It's not just, like you said, here's your reading plan because, to be honest, you could monotonously go through the Bible and not get anything out of it. But why? Why is it vital that the believer, that Christians, that marriages are in the word of God. What is that doing for us? Why is God desire us to know His word? [Jerrad] Yeah, so at the heart of it is it's bigger than just, I think what you said is so true, that as Christians we feel like, man I know I should be praying more. I know I should be reading the Bible more. I know I should be tithing more and whatever. It's these disciplines that we kind of get on ourselves about. But at the heart of it is we are all susceptible to making up our own Gods in our own minds. We don't drift towards good theology. We drift away from it. We drift towards selfishness and so often times, what happens is, we end up making our God look like us and he ends up liking the things that we like and he can tolerate the sins that we tolerate and he's not, he loves the people we love and he hates the people that we're mad at, right? He ends up looking a lot like us. And so scripture confronts us, right? II Timothy 3:16, it's useful for rebuking and correcting and training in righteousness. When we read scripture, we realize quickly God is his own person. He has his own personality. He is who he is. He is Yahweh God. And so we are trying to, if we don't learn who that God is, we will drift towards making up an own God in our mind and that is a really really dangerous place to be as a Christian. [Aaron] So we dig into the word. We learn, and I love what you said because we do make up our own gods. When we just, and this is where a lot of Christians are today and I pray that my listeners aren't there. But if they are, I pray that this snaps them out of it and says, oh we need to find out who God is, not who we think God is. But knowing who God is, what does that do to the Christian? What does that do in our lives when we're like, oh. Laila, you mentioned that you met the love of God and you're like, He loves me. And at first you weren't like, and you heard that from the pulpit. You heard that from pastors and from church. But you weren't interested in the word of God and then all of a sudden you were like, wait a minute. The word of God is who God is. You know? [Laila] Right, exactly. Well I think if I would have just stuck with what this pastor had said to me or what the Christians are saying to me then I would also be pretty susceptible to also listening to maybe what other people were telling me. Untruths and lies. And so I think having first been drawn in by hearing God's word spoken, then able to really ground myself in knowing who God is because of who God says He is and Jesus is and I wouldn't know that if it weren't for the scriptures and like I said, I would just be so easily swayed to believe who knows what if I would have just kept to what people tell me about God instead of what God tells me about God. [Jennifer] Now when you do hear people tell you things about God you can test those things because you know His word. [Laila] Exactly. [Jerrad] Christians say all kinds of really crazy things, especially on social media. Like God told me this, or just believe this, and it's like, that's not at all what God's word says. And that's why it's so important for Christians to know the word of God because even Christians, or especially Christians, will say things that are just like, man that sounds really great but that just is not at all what the scriptures teach. [Laila] They're like half-truths. So they sound really Christian-y and good, but not quite right. [Aaron] Yeah, I take the example from Christ when he's in the wilderness being tempted by the devil and the devil uses scripture [Laila] Mm hmm, right. [Aaron] to tempt Jesus. He goes to the very thing that teaches us about who God is and he takes it out of context, you know? Which is funny because this is what false teachers do today. They're using scriptures and they're drawing it out of context and they're using it to, like you said, create their own God from the scriptures rather than, well actually, this is why it's saying what it's saying and this is what it's saying and this is who it is saying it to. That we have to be like Christ. Knowing the word, so we can go back to the enemy or to these things we see on social media, and say well okay, maybe that is right but it also says this and so, therefore, that thing can't be true. [Jerrad] Right, yup. That's such a good reminder. And we remember in scripture, Satan has been doing that since day one. Didn't God say. Very first words we ever see from Satan was "Didn't God say". And so yeah. We have to know the character of God because you're right. The enemy loves to twist the words of God. [Jennifer] So talking about the character of God. Can we know God without a close relationship with the Bible? [Jerrad] I guess the only hesitancy I would say in that is there's so many believers who didn't have any actual Bible in their hand for a long time. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Mm. [Jerrad] Who had to hear stories about God and they relied on, maybe they had one Bible in their whole village, right? [Laila] Even today. [Jerrad] Even today that's true where the word of God is being taught orally because people don't know how to read or they don't have access to the scriptures. And I believe that God, supernaturally by the Holy Spirit, can continue to work in their lives and mature believers for those that are in the situation. But that's the exception right? For an American who's listening, who's got a Bible to say, yeah I kind of got a good idea of who God is, I kind of get the jist of the Bible, to say I don't really need to read. That's just foolish thinking. [Aaron] Yeah I was just gonna say that. We've heard that before and that argument, well there's other people that don't have the word of God. But that doesn't give an excuse to all of us who have multiple Bibles and we can literally go to a hotel room [Jerrad] Right. [Aaron] and there is a Bible in the drawer. We can go to the store and get a Bible. People give out free Bibles. You can to your church. They'll probably give you a Bible. [Jerrad] Right. [Aaron] So we don't get to have the excuse of like, yeah. [Laila] Right. [Jerrad] So if you're listening right now and you don't have a Bible, I will send you one. Like that, there is zero excuse and I know you guys would too. [Aaron] So Laila and Jerrad, you guys were talking about, when you got married very quickly and how you guys hadn't established an "us" yet and that's why you couldn't do the wedding, you didn't have a style for the wedding, you're like who are we gonna invite, what does this thing look like? But things are much different now because you know each other and I just was trying to, I wanted to highlight that again because, we can know, you know the question was can you have a close relationship with God without the Bible. And I like your answer, no, I don't think we can. But the Bible does tell us, in Romans, that we can know of God just by nature itself. Just by creation itself. But that does not tell us who God is. So we can experience God. Any person in any village anywhere can know that there is a God. Which is what Atheists they have to just literally deny that there is a God. They can't just assume that there's not because there is no, the world is proof of it. But to know God, just like when you guys were getting married, you guys didn't yet know each other, we couldn't know God without knowing what He's said because that would be like being married and you guys never talking. Jerrad never explaining who his family is and showing you who they are and never telling you things from the past and how he thinks and things he's done. And you literally just, you live together and you have no clue who Jerrad is. Yeah, you're married. [Laila] Right. [Aaron] You're connected with him but, that's not a very fruitful marriage, right? [Laila] Right. [Aaron] So I wanted to bring that up, that beautiful analogy. But now you guys know each other, and you guys are consistently knowing each other and that should be the heart of the marriage after God is that we, whether we know everything now, and whether we're in the word of God four hours a day, whatever that looks like, that we have a desire to go that direction. And it sounds like that's where you guys are at. [Laila] Yeah, I would say. Right, it would be the same. I mean, that is a good analogy. If I had married Jerrad and in the first year decided that I know everything there is about Jerrad because now I've been married to him for a year. That's crazy. Every day that goes by, I am changing and when I interact with Jerrad, I learn about him. Something new about him. I mean almost daily we just learn the nuances and I think it's that way with scripture too. Last year we read through the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, and I am certain that when we read through it again, I am going to learn it in a totally different way as opposed to have having just assumed that I know what I need to know and be done with it. I mean they say it's the living word of God. It's not changing but I am and the way that I, the way that God speaks to me through His word changes every time I read even the same scripture, over and over. It's different each time. [Jennifer] I love that you give that picture that it doesn't change but I am. Like, I change because of it. So I want to kind of dig a little personal here and just ask you guys in what ways has the word of God transformed your marriage? [Laila] Well I'm reminded through scripture who God is and what He's already done and so I can count on what I know He can do. You know, like we said, we've been married for nine years and a couple years ago we had a really really hard season in marriage. It's really part of how DadTired was actually born out of that season. But it was just, it was actually really awful. But I was able to pull from scripture what I know about God and what the Bible says about marriage and instead of bailing out like what my flesh would want to do and what my emotions were telling me to do is just get out of here, this sucks, this is hard, I don't like him anymore. I was able to just know that God can change hearts and I just prayed like crazy through that season. And like what your quote from the book, "allowing the word of God to transform them by the power of the Holy Spirit". I wouldn't know that power if I hadn't been in scripture. But I just was able to trust in the power of the Holy Spirit because I know what He's done. I know what He can do. And here we are. Nine years in. And way past that awful season. [Jennifer] What a powerful testimony. Like Aaron was saying, I pray for those listening. My prayer for those listening would hear that and be encouraged. And if anyone is in that place right now where things are, where maybe they're rough or it's hard to persevere right now, I hope that they would dig into the word of God and find the same hope and endurance that you found through the word of God. [Jerrad] Yeah I was just gonna say too, to kind of piggy-back off of that is, your whole book is called Marriage After God, which is really like, that title says I want to marriage my, or I'm sorry. I want to model by marriage after God, right? In the character of God. And so to do that you have to know what God's character is like. And when you read the scripture, you learn that God is a God who is relentless in His pursuit of people who constantly turn their back on Him. And he's faithful even when people aren't faithful. And so Laila, being connected to that truth, and the truth that she learned through the word of God and who God actually is, not who she wanted him to be in her mind, she was able to pursue me relentlessly even when I was not being faithful in my love and pursuit of her. And so, that's a testimony. That's much deeper than, hey, you should read the Bible every day [Aaron] Yeah. [Jerrad] because it's a good thing to do as a Christian. It literally saved our marriage. Had she had made up some God in her mind, she probably would have said, well God wants me to be gone because Jerrad's being an, you know, he's being a jerk. But I know who God is and I want to model my marriage after who God is and as a result, I'm going to pursue Jerrad the way that God has pursued me even if Jerrad's not fully in it. And as a result of that, the Holy Spirit worked and changed my heart. And literally, the reason that we're sitting here today, doing this podcast, is because of that. [Aaron] And that's what's amazing about the word of God. When the Bible tells us that the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, and we also see that in Revelation when it's describing Jesus, you know this two-edged sword coming out of his mouth. And that it cuts even to the marrow. Like it cuts through our flesh. It cuts through our desires. It cuts through our opinions, our way of thinking, down to the motives and then it reveals to us who we are. You know? And that's what changes us because, going back to that idea of creating our own little Gods. You know, creating what we believe God to be. You end up with the conclusion, Laila, is that well God wants me to be happy. Therefore, since I'm not happy, God wants me to leave. You know? [Laila] Right. Oh yeah, I would have loved to have, at the time, made that true. Jerrad's not being what I want him to be. He's not making me happy. And yeah, God wants me to be happy so I'm out. But I just knew that wasn't true. How many times we've been unfaithful to God just in our walk with him and He just doesn't bail. There's just no way around it. And he says to, you know, love your spouse that way. [Aaron] Which is crazy. [Laila] I just had nothing else I could do and I knew I couldn't change Jerrad. I could beg and cry and you know, hey, don't be a jerk. But there was just nothing I could do. We were just in a bad spot and I'm sure I was not always pleasant for him either. But I just had to pray to the one who I knew could change Jerrad's heart and it certainly wasn't me or any made up God who looks like me. But just, like you said, the power of the Holy Spirit, that was it. And I prayed a lot. [Aaron] And he's doing it. There's people listening right now that are probably gonna be finding freedom and restoration in their marriages just because of this testimony. So thank you for your openness. [Laila] And to be honest, there as a lot of eye-rolls for me when people would say, just pray about it, just pray about it. I hated that because I wanted some action, you know? But we were just at the point that I thought I literally have nothing else I can do and I would set my alarm in the middle of the night and get up and pray. It was just. I dunno. I'm tellin' ya. I really didn't like when people told me, just pray about it. But I did it because I was just that desperate and it was those prayers have certainly been answered. [Aaron] Well I think of, so our pastor always says, "Prayer isn't the preparation for the battle. Prayer is the battle." That's how we war. And the Bible tell us to pray about all things and for everything and in every place. And when we don't just. The prayer that you're talking about isn't just, "Okay, Lord, just fix the situation." It's "Lord, what do you want? Lord, where do you want me? What do you want me to do? How do you want me to pray?" Man, and just in another encouragement, I love it, the Bible tells us when we don't even know what to pray for, that the spirit prays for us. And then on top of that, Jesus is at the right hand of God right now interceding on our behalf. Which is amazing. That you could sit there in bed and say, "I have no clue what I'm doing Lord, but I need your help" and Jesus is praying for you and he's saying, Lord help them. Give them strength. Give them courage. So I would encourage everyone too. That that's a great encouragement. Don't just pray. But pray with anticipation of what God wants and His will. So I want to ask you guys another question. You know, we're talking about going through struggles. Jennifer and I, that's kind of where our ministry was born from, was struggles we were going through. It sounds like the DadTired ministry and what you guys are doing was born out of some issues you guys were going through. But another thing we talk about in the book is that having a good marriage is not the end game. Having a healthy marriage is not the end game. Getting to the word of God and knowing the God is not the end game. These things that we're talking about is to do something. That there is an end in mind. How do you guys see that, you know, the word of God changing you, you guys walking in obedience to the word and finding that restoration in your marriage, where you're at now, how has God used all of that stuff and your obedience for his sake? [Jerrad] Yeah, I think that, just kind of going back to what we were just talking about. I think that when we live out what we see God being like, we give everyone around us a glimpse of that God that we see in the Bible. And so when Laila was faithful to me in that season, she gave me a glimpse of the gospel. When she was faithful. When our kids see us be faithful to each other even when we're not happy, but we continue to pursue each other relentlessly, we continue to pursue their hearts even when they're disobedient, we continue to forgive, we give them glimpses of the gospel and the good news of God. And then our neighbors see that. The people around us see that. It's living out what we see the God of the Bible being like that gives the world a glimpse of who God is. So yeah, I think that's what God meant when he said, be salt and light, and to represent me to the world. And so anything other than that is really telling a lie about God. Had Laila bailed on me, then she would be teaching our kids that like, hey, you can just get out when it's easy, or when you're not happy, or when it's hard, I'm sorry. And when you're not happy. And that's not who the God of the Bible is. And so it would be a lie about His marriage covenant, the whole reason of a marriage covenant was to, like you said, it wasn't for the purpose of us just being happy and building our own little family for the sake of joy and having a nice little neat marriage. But it was to give ourselves, our kids, and the world around us, a glimpse of who God is. That's the whole point of marriage. And so, we don't want to tell a lie about it. We want to represent that original intent well and to show off to each other and to the world who God really is. [Aaron] That's beautiful. [Jennifer] I have tears in my eyes. [Aaron] That was really good. [Jennifer] That was awesome. [Aaron] How would you encourage those listening today to get even closer to the word of God? You know, not just like, here's a set of rules, here's your reading plan. But like, why? Why should they be closer to God, God's word? [Jarred] I think that I would probably just go back to what we were just talking about at the beginning of the conversation and what we've hit throughout this conversation and that's that, man, I don't care if you've grown up in church since you were born, if you were born in a baptismal, you know? Or like you just gave your. That's a joke, by the way. Nobody's hopefully born in a baptismal. Whether you're born in the church or you just gave your life to Christ today, we are all susceptible of just making up who we want God to be. I've been teaching the word of God for a decade now and I still do it. I still want God to be, look like I want him to look. And I'm still confronted by the scriptures and the truth of the scriptures every single day. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jerrad] We literally just read a verse this last week in II Timothy that says you're always learning but never arriving at the truth, or you know, at the knowledge of the truth. And it's like, well crud, that's convicting because I'm always learning. I feel like I'm learning and yet am I actually getting closer to Jesus? Just don't be arrogant enough, even subtle arrogance to think that you know you can wrap your mind around this God of the universe. He is way to big for you to understand fully. And it's just vital to continue to understand who this God is and to chase after Him. The other thing I would say on that is Proverbs 1 says, I think it's Proverbs 1? It could be Psalm 1. One of the Ps. One says that if you, a man in the word of God is like a tree planted near living water, right? [Aaron] Oh yeah. [Jerrad] And so we all can tell when trees are planted near water. They're alive, they're producing fruit, they're green, they look healthy. And the ones that aren't? It's really easy to tell. Hey, that tree could use some water. It's dead. It's dying. I could probably push it over right? And you can tell people, Christians, who aren't near the word of God. They look tired. They look stressed. They look like they're burned out and it's like bro, it's not that you need to have this huge crisis and figure things out. Just go plant yourself near the living water which is the word of God again. [Aaron] Yeah, and I think of the parable of the seed and the sower and the different soils. And we wanna have the soft soil where when the seed is planted, which is the word of God, it goes deep into us. And if we're not, like you were just giving that analogy of the tree. We actually had a tree die a couple years ago because we had a dry winter and we didn't realize we were supposed to water it when it's so dry. And the ground was all cracked and it started dying from the top down because the roots were, it was probably like got some sort of root rot, but because the ground was dry and the water didn't go deep, the roots didn't go deep. And so it's the same with us. If we're not in the word of God, if we don't know the word of God, those roots are going, they're shallow. And we think we're going to survive on that as a Christian in this world. So that's a good reminder. Thank you for that. [Jennifer] This has been really great talking with you guys. We have one more question and it's something that we're asking everyone throughout the series and it's, in your own words, what is a marriage after God? [Laila] A marriage after God. I would say just remembering that your marriage isn't just for your happiness. I know we hear that a lot. Marriage isn't for your happiness. It's for your holiness. But that's just really true. Jerrad's not here to fulfill me and make me happy because I would have bounced a couple times and I'm sure he would have been happy to do the same on a few occasions over the years. But just remembering that our marriage is to point each other, and our kids, and our neighbors, and just the world around us, back to God. That's what I'm to do for him and he's to do for me. We just point each other to Jesus, make each other more like Jesus through prayer and just trusting in God's spirit and just praying that, over each other and for each other. [Jerrad] I would agree with all of that except that I would have never left you. [Laila] I know I feel bad because we keep talking about how I could have left, I could have left, but I'm sure I'm not always a peach. I don't always make you happy but thank you for sticking around anyway. [Jennifer] Well thank you guys so much for being on the show today. We are just cheering for you as you pursue the ministry that God has for you and your marriage and also online. We would like to encourage everyone to take a moment and pray with us and then Aaron will close us out. Dear Lord, thank you for your word. It is living and it is active, sharper than any two-edged sword. Lord, you created everything by your word and faith comes by hearing your word. You tell us that man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of your mouth. We pray that as husbands and wives who love you and are chasing after you, that we would be men and women of your word. That we would make it a priority in our lives. That we would read it and meditate on it. That it would be our sustenance. That we would allow ourselves to be transformed by it and renewed by it. May our marriages be transformed by it. We pray that our lives would represent what your word says. We pray that we would take the sword of the spirit, which is your word, and use it to fight against the schemes of the devil. Lord, your word is good and a gift for everyone. May we read it, may we know it, and may we live it out every day. In Jesus name, Amen. [Aaron] Amen. [Jerrad] Amen. [Jennifer] Amen. [Aaron] Okay, so, everyone listening, we thank you for joining us on this episode with Jerrad and Laila Lopes. And I just want you all to go check out his podcast. It's called "DadTired" and you can get it anywhere podcasts are available. So iTunes, just search for Dad Tired. Podbean, Castbox, wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find him. And can you let us know if there's anything else that they can get from you guys, how they can connect with you guys? [Jerrad] Super grateful again to be here. If they just go to DadTired.com, we've got a free little eBook that we give away to guys on just trying to help them figure out how to lead their family well and there's a community to jump in to which a lot of guys in our DadTired community are also part of the Marriage After God and Husband Revolution family. [Aaron] Awesome. Thank you guys again for being on the show and we have 12 more episodes coming up in this series, tons of more awesome interviews, so we want you guys to stay tuned and we'll see you next week for next week's episode. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at MarriageAfterGod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

GUEST BIO: Jennifer Bland is a Senior Software Engineer, Speaker, Author, host and Google Developers Expert.  She is on the leadership team for Women Who Code Atlanta and she runs the websites in5days.tech and codeprep.io which provide technical training on JavaScript topics.  Jennifer is also the host of the CodePrep podcast. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Jennifer Bland is Phil’s guest on today’s show. She is one of Google’s Web Technologies Developers Experts, who has had a long tech career. Over the years, she has been a developer, consultant and project manager. Now she works as a senior software engineer for Stanley Black and Decker. But, Jennifer also spends a lot of time and energy working in the community enabling under-represented groups to become successful in IT. She is a well-known speaker, podcast host and author, as well as a trainer. Via her two websites in5days.tech and codeprep.io she provides technical training for JavaScript related topics KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.06) – So Jennifer, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Jennifer starts by explaining that she is, currently, a senior software engineer for Stanley Black and Decker in Atlanta. She is very proud of being a member of one of the most active Women Who Code chapters in the world. Fairly recently, Jennifer has started to provide technical training for others. (1.55) – How did you get involved with Women Who Code? Jennifer discovered them while preparing to attend her first coding boot camp. In preparation, she needed to complete 6 weeks of pre-course material. To get the work done she attended one of Women Who Code’s Coding Jams. From then on she just kept attending their events and meetings. Today, she is on the Leadership Committee for Women Who Code Atlanta. (2.57) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Jenifer says that is - “create a public presence”, something that is really easy to do using the internet. It could be as simple as creating your own twitter account and tweeting about tech. Blogging, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook can all work too. Attending meetups and conferences is a good idea too. You can easily record a few videos while you are there and post them. When you do that, people will start seeking you out at these events. Normally, you will also start to be invited to speak. (4.48) – You mentioned Twitter, are there any other platforms you would recommend? – LinkedIn is an important one. It creates an opportunity for you to write articles and share them worldwide. Pinterest and Instagram can also work although they are more geared towards sharing content via pictures. YouTube is excellent too. (5.39) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. For Jennifer it was not a single moment. It was a 6-month process that she went through. Basically, she had joined a company without working out what the work environment would be first. The company had reached out to her as a result of her public presence and offered her a great salary and benefits package. Initially, she said no. But, a few months later they asked again and she said yes. That meant leaving a company she was happy working at. Unfortunately, that was a big mistake. The work environment at her new firm was incredibly poor for the entire 6 months she stayed there. (7.18) how do you go about assessing the work environment in advance? Jennifer starts simply by googling them and talking to people who are already working there. She also tries to reach out and find out what their turnover rate is like. High turnover is a big red flag. (8.09) – Phil asks Jennifer what her best career moment was. Jennifer says that it was becoming a Google Developers expert, at the end of last year. Being one of the few picked out of a field of hundreds of thousands of developers was a huge achievement. To gain the award you genuinely have to be an industry leader and someone who contributes significantly to the community. Plus, to apply someone who is already a Google Developer expert has to nominate you. Then you go through multiple layers of interviews. Here in the USA, there are only 16 Web Technologies Google Developers. So, it feels especially good to be one of them. (10.11) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Jennifer finds the pace of change to be very exciting. She reflects on the fact that she graduated before IBM introduced the PC and got her MBA before the internet became available. So, she has seen huge changes. This frenetic pace of change means that new doors are opening, all the time. As a result, an IT career is highly rewarding. (11.20) – Phil shares her enthusiasm for the rate of change. He goes on to ask Jennifer what she feels about the way in which the devices and software we are using is evolving so much. Jennifer agrees this is exciting too. In fact, the thirst for new devices is helping to drive change within the industry. The fact that people want Alexa style devices to do more, self-driving cars and other devices are pushing developers into new territory. (12.35) – What drew you to a career in IT? Jennifer explained that the first time she was drawn to an IT career it was using the Commodore 64 that piqued her interest. She spent months putting it together and learning how to do it. That is what got her into programming. At the age of 51, she retired and had not planned to return to work. But, she picked up a discounted JavaScript programming book in a bookstore. She read it and could not resist putting what she was learning into action. Once again, she fell in love with programming and decided to come out of retirement. (14.19) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? For Jennifer, that was, invest in yourself. In particular, invest in learning the skills that enable you to continually learn new things. The world of tech changes at a very fast pace, which means that you have to keep up. You need to be able to learn new languages fast, and be able to adapt to fresh implementation and working methods. You need to be able to ride the waves of change. (15.42) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Jennifer says she would focus on honing her ability to learn tech skills as fast as possible. Coding boot camps are an excellent way to do exactly that. You can learn to code in 3 to 6 months instead of spending 4 years getting a college degree. Taking the boot camp route also means that you avoid building up 50 to 100K in student debts. After just 6 months of participating in a camp you can get a job. Within a year, you will have created a brand new career and be about 3 years ahead of your peers. (17.14) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Right now, Jennifer is focusing on try to get as many women and underrepresented groups into tech over the next 4 years, or so. Then she thinks she will retire again. She wants to help these groups of people to have the skills to earn good money. Working in IT makes it easy to find relatively secure employment, something that these demographic groups desperately need. (18.11) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? For Jennifer that is easy. The ability to network easily has helped her enormously. It has opened many doors for her, which has, in turn, enabled her to open doors for many others. For example, she was able to give the resume of a lady she met at Women Who Code to her manager. That woman still works there today. That networking moment benefited everyone involved, for many years. (19.38) – Phil asks Jennifer to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Jennifer says that if you want to work in the IT industry, you have to accept the fact that you are going to have to change jobs a lot. Very few successful IT professionals stay in a role for more than 5 years. To progress, you need to create the opportunities, which, most of the time means being willing to move to another company. BEST MOMENTS: (3.24) JENNIFER – "Take the time to create your own public presence. It will benefit you so much in the long run." (14.23) JENNIFER – "Invest in learning the skills that will allow you to learn these new technologies that are coming out." (15.21) JENNIFER – "Invest in yourself, this will enable you to ride the waves of change to new and secure better opportunities for yourself."  (16.32) JENNIFER – "If you complete a six-month coding boot camp, you can get a job." (17.07) JENNIFER – "I would definitely focus on learning tech skills as quickly and efficiently as I possibly could." CONTACT JENNIFER: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ratracegrad @ratracegrad LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ratracegrad/ Personal Website: https://www.jenniferbland.com/ Company Website: https://www.codeprep.io/ and https://www.in5days.tech

Order Our New Book, "Marriage After God" Today! https://marriageaftergod.com “A marriage after God is a team moving together in one mind, one heart, one spirit, and in one direction with their eyes on heavenly and eternal things.” - Aaron Smith, Marriage After God book In this episode, we interview our good friends, Ryan and Selena Frederick of the Fierce Marriage Podcast https://Fiercemarriage.com Dear Lord, We pray we would be husbands and wives who pursue intimacy with you. We pray we would make ourselves known to you and know to each other. Help us to walk with each other in an understanding way and to love unconditionally. Thank you for the gift of oneness in marriage and what it represents. We pray we would operate as one every day in our marriage relationship. Holy Spirit continue to empower us to do so. Help us to be transparent with one another. Help us to be great listeners as well. May truth be exposed and may your presence be evident in our lives. Thank you for marriage and thank you for salvation. You are a good God and we love you. May our hearts align with yours as we chase boldly after you and pursue a marriage That reflects your love story. In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. And today we're in part three of the Marriage After God series and we're gonna be talking with Ryan and Selena Frederick about oneness and intimacy in marriage. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. We have been married for over a decade. And so far, we have four young children. We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. With a desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, Love, And power. That can only be found by chasing after God. Together. Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. This is Marriage After God. Hey thanks for joining us today. As always, wanna invite you to leave a review. Star ratings are awesome, that's the easiest way to leave a review but the text reviews are also really powerful and we love reading all of them and that's an awesome way to spread the word about the podcast. Another way you can support the podcast is by shopping on our online store, shop.marriageaftergod.com, and we wanna encourage you to get a copy of our new book, Marriage After God, that's what this whole series is based off of and if you've been listening to the series, you've already been encouraged and inspired by the book content and so we just wanna at least get you over to the site to give you more information on the book. So today we're talking with some good friends of ours, Ryan and Selena Frederick from Fierce Marriage and Ryan, Selena, welcome. Hey guys. Hi guys, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. Excited to be here. We're excited to have you. Yeah it's a treat. Yeah every time I think of you guys, we listen to your podcast, of course, 'cause your friends of ours, but I always think of our trip to IKEA in California, do you remember that? We had one child. Oh yeah. It was so fun. Do you remember that? That was a fun date, yeah. It was, and I don't know what we bought, but I remember it barely fit in our car, and Aaron you helped me fit it in our little Prius that we had in California. Oh, I don't remember. Was it shelves or something? Well it was may more fun for me than it was for you. It actually might have been a crib. As much fun as it was walking around Ikea, I remember we just had really great conversation. Yes, and you only had one child. Did we eat lunch at Ikea? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, it was one kid, it was a totally different life back then and we were all still fairly new to all of this marriage stuff. So, Yes. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves, who you are, how long you've been married what do you guys do? Sure. Children, stuff like that. Yeah we are the Fredericks and we have been married, it'll be 16 years this year. And we, Wow. Have two little girls named Adelaide and Clementine, they are five and 2 1/2. And we are, yeah we're the voices and authors and everything-- Yeah. I guess behind Fierce Marriage. Yeah. And that is us for now. That's for now. We live in Washington State. The best place in the world. Yeah, just a little bit north and a little better than Oregon state. Stop And a little bit wetter. This is true. Wetter is better. A little bit colder. Awesome, well thank you guys so much for being here. We just know that this is gonna be a great time for our listeners to get to know you, if they don't already, which they probably do. But we are just really excited about this topic. We're jumping into chapter three of Marriage After God, which is the Marks of a Marriage After God and we're just gonna cover two of those topics today. In this interview, yeah. In this interview. But before we do that we wanna get into the icebreaker question. This is just a fun way to-- Let people know us. Yeah. You guys better. Alright, bring it on. So the icebreaker question is, do you have any hobbies together, or separate, or maybe as a family? I think we try to keep our hobbies mostly together these days. Yeah. It's actually contributed to that oneness that we'll get into, but we do have, you know, different passions and things that we enjoy I think separately. I like riding horses, Ryan doesn't like it as much as I do, he'll do it, but. Actually we went, we went on a vacation and we went on 'em. We did, that's right. We rode together and I think I was won over. Yes. It was so fun I had the most amazing, but, what do you call it, a mount, an amazing mount. Your horse was pretty great. Yeah. It was pretty great. So I was actually, I was following along on Insta Stories and I actually became really fond of it too and I can't wait for vacation Aaron of riding horses together. Oh, are you, that's a hint? Yes. Ryan, it looked incredible. Like every time you guys posted I was just like, yes, that looks awesome. Because. What's funny is I have a completely different sentiment to horses, I was raised around horses and my mom always took us riding and I hate it. Oh no. You were responsible for cleaning after them? My sentiment might be different, it's been a long time, but yeah I didn't like the, mucking the stalls and feeding the horses and cleaning them, and yeah, so it was not a fun part of it. We'll pray for you that the Lord will renew your heart for it. But. Thank you, thank you that's awesome. So I just wanted, before we get into a quote from the book, I just wanted to, the reason we, we're interviewing so many different people on this podcast in this series for the, Marriage After God book is we wanna just show the diversity in the body of Christ and just how all of our marriages as we chase after God together and how God wants to use us all for kingdom work in one direction. So I just, I'm excited about that, we love that you guys are doing it, you guys are a marriage after God. And so I just wanna read a quote from chapter three, The Marks of a Marriage After God. It says, "a marriage after God is a team moving together in one mind, one heart, one spirit, and in one direction with their eyes on heavenly and eternal things." Do you guys agree with that? Amen. Oh absolutely. I'm sure you do. Good stuff. Yeah. Good stuff. So in your guys' marriage how have you two cultivated oneness? That's a great question and it is not without a, I think intentionality, I think is the biggest way to be honest. As we've just consciously said that hey we, we need, we're not just roommates, but we need to be on mission together in unity on whatever that mission is. Of course as Christians we have a pretty clear mission right, make disciples and go to the ends of the earth and glorify God and all that good stuff, not necessarily in that order, but, and so I think we've cultivated that by, Selena talked about our hobbies, I think decisions like that, right? So I enjoy different things that I just don't do because they just, they don't add to the family that I feel like God is calling us to. Right. It's harder for us to say yes to things that might take us away from each other for even just a day or sometimes even a couple hours, but on a consistent basis it can kind of, we feel like it kind of breaks away our unity, it kind of chips away at it slowly. If, you know, I'm going and riding horses every Saturday for five hours a day, you know, and that's kind of like our only, it's family time together, so. Or I, you know, I love going to the mountains and the ocean-- I do too. Scuba diving. I like it yeah. And so it's like, we do some of that, but it's like, if it were, we've kind of made a decision that that's the exception and not the rule. Right. It's like you don't owe me time by myself. Right. Right, I feel like that's kind of a cultural mantra, is like you get your time I get mine, you get your money, I get my money and we've just thrown all that out the window, it's our time, it's our money. Not that you can't, you know. Yeah. Not that you can't be generous to each other in those ways, but just as a norm I think that's one way we've done it for us. And early on in our relationship, before we were married or anything, God was always a big part of it. We always talked about what we were learning in the Bible together and, excuse me, and even to this day we're like, what has God been teaching you and just the nature of what we do, and you guys understand this. We're in the word, we're learning about God, we're teaching him to our children. We're constantly being sanctified and learning new things and for me that's, that spiritual oneness has really solidified and grown out of those conversations that we've had together. That's so good. So as you guys communicate, can you just encourage our listeners with maybe what that looks like practically, like if, like how do you cultivate oneness in your marriage if something comes up that, you know, something that one of you wants to do, or one of you is wrestling with, how do you communicate that to each other? Yeah, that's a really good question. It's different obviously for every situation in every marriage and you kinda know what those hot-button topics are, or where those big red buttons are and so you-- Well I feel like you get to know it. Like we didn't just decide not to do things it kind of, as kids came into our life and as we became more unified in our marriage and kind of went through some hard times together, we started, and spent kind of some just time, one-one-one with each other, we started understanding where our boundaries were beginning to fall I feel like a little bit more. Yeah. And go ahead. Well, one of the things I tell guys, and I think it applies to gals as well, but I don't, I'd rather just talk to guys on this topic. Is that, you know, if ever in doubt, if you ever can always be generous, always choose generosity towards your wife, right? If there's a spot where you can give in, what be it a hobby, or an argument, or whatever, be generous, be the one to give in. And there are times when I feel like as a husband and a man, you do need to kinda like, stand your ground on principle or whatever, but I do think those are rare times, right, in most marriages. Right. And so I think cultivating generosity around those conversations is really important meaning that A, like if we're talking about I wanna go hang out with a buddy one night, like so, so actually it's Jeff's birthday today so I'm gonna go and hang out with him tonight, this is a real-life example and Selena didn't even, I didn't even have to ask. She's like hey, Jeff's my best friend, hey, go hang out tonight with him, you know, have a good night and just a-- Right. And so she was generous toward me, I didn't have to-- But it's not a regular battle that we fight. No, no. You know, it's not part of our regular rhythms of life, we've just kind of established that boundary that, you know, we can again ask each other and be generous in these conversations, but, you know, all in all our first disciples are each other and then our children, and then our neighbors and community, so operating from that vision-- Yeah. Inside out kind of is where, is how we, yeah. It does start there. And if you're not unified on those deep things these types of arguments will seem much more significant-- Sure, yep. Than they should be-- True. And they'll hold way more weight then they should be. So, I guess to answer your question Jen, is if, I would say, get on the same page. You might not be unified right now, but get on the same page about the big things, right, and then these types of arguments will have a greater context that they can operate within and that's where the, that's where generosity makes sense, that's where, you know-- Saying no to things. Saying no to things to say yes to each other-- Right. That makes way more sense when you're on the same page about-- Yeah. Why you exist as a couple. Well and I like that you took essentially Ephesians 5:25 and that, you know, that calling to lay down our lives for our wives and love them as ourselves, that's that generosity word. Like of course we're usually first generous to ourselves, right? True. Like well I deserve this or I need the time. So I appreciate that perspective on that, that scripture. And, you know, as being one of the marks of a marriage after God, this oneness idea, I feel like, you know, what you're saying is, all those little decisions that kind of start developing and the way of thinking, you know, it's not like you throw your hobbies out and like you never have them. Right. It's just not the, it's not the default position, the default is what can we do together and so the exception of the rule is like in those times of like, absolutely like, you know, your wife is confident in your, your oneness with her and she's actually excited to let you go have this time and, and you probably would agree with this, whenever that happens in our life often I, actually it's not as enjoyable-- Yes By myself, I'm just like oh I wish my-- Jen was here. Yeah. That's funny. You know and there's times that that's not, you know, not the case, but the oneness I feel like that, that when you said, you know, focus on those big, you know those big topics, I almost feel like it's focus on the, what's the one direction we're going together and then that kind of sets the tone for everything. Because if we both have a different goal in mind, like I want my life to look like this, I want my life to look like this, then every single conversation, every single topic will be a fight because unless it, the other person has aligned with my direction-- Right. It's going to be a fight, it's gonna be a struggle. And so finding that unifying mission, which of course like you said, we all have the same mission, you know, if it's the word of God, if it's what he's doing in this world then we can't, it's easier to lay down-- Right. My pride, my hobbies, my, because I'd be like, well, like currently in this moment that's not going to fulfill our big mission, you know, of being together 'cause now I'm not with my wife in one and we're-- At odds. And there will be a lot of kind of gray, right? So that's like the black and white piece, right, where if a younger couple-- Yeah. Right, they're just, they're heading into marriage, or they just got married, or maybe a couple that's been married for awhile, but they're new to their faith, right? The first piece is okay, what is that mission as people who follow Christ. If we believe he is who he says he is then that should bear weight on every aspect of our lives, okay, then that's the big, that's where we're headed, right, and it's good for a couple, we always encourage couples-- Yeah. To sit down and articulate these things in what we call, a family vision statement, and it's, that includes their mission which is gonna be some, some, what's the word, expression, of the great commission, right? So however that-- Yeah. Plays out in their life, it's gonna be an expression of that if they call themselves Christians and then below that you have, and a lot of couples never do this and it's so important. We hadn't done it until 10 years in our marriage at least. Yeah, and it changed everything-- Yes. And I'm not exaggerating, it changed everything about, in this topic specifically, in unity, because we went through and found in mind our personalities, our relationship for what we call core values, right? So a lot of times we say oh, like in a business context you say our core value is quality, customer service, right? These are ideals, right? Yeah. But for a marriage the core values are things that you actually are whether you know it or not. Things that you care about whether you know it or not, right? So for us we had to realize that we really value, one of 'em is community, right, that's part of that because obviously we're Christian, but we value family and friends and deep relationships with fewer rather than shallow relationships with more, that was one of 'em. -yeah. Adventure, it sounds kind of funny, but adventure's a core value of ours meaning that we wanna live lives that are kinda on the edge, right? Oh, I would agree with that one. Yeah and we're always kind of-- Yeah we use the word extraordinary. Yes. Yeah, I love it. You guys use that in the beginning of your podcast. Um-hum, yeah. Got another one and I can keep going on, I think there's only five, like we tried to keep 'em as few as possible. And then this is part that you were talking about Aaron where you get kind of the expressions that, that kind of, I'd say the more grayer parts of this, is like okay, so how are we gonna decorate our house, right? Or what kind of house are we gonna invest it, not just buy, but invest in because of these core values? Yeah. And so, and those, that third part of the family vision statement is what we call the, envision statement. So like we envision, one of our envision statements is we envision a family that laughs together, we envision a home that is welcoming to, to friends-- Everyone, yeah. And strangers and people and we can feed them. So what, that has all kinds of implications for how we actually set up our lives. How big is our table, right? Like how big is our living room, yeah. They make all the small decisions in essence easier, because they've already got, instead of just starting from scratch every single time on the decision like, well what do we want? You're like well, does this fit into our, what we want? Yep, that's exactly right. Exactly. You know are we gonna spend a thousand hours on this project if it means sacrificing-- Yeah. These other things-- Right. That are core to what we love. And what I love about this is it's, you know, we always talk about well you gotta be on the same page, like that's how you're one, that's how you build unity. It's an easy phrase, yeah. It's an easy phrase to say, but I feel like this is such a practical way to actually get on the same page because you put it down on one page literally. I feel like in the oneness side of things of being able to communicate and we're gonna get into a little bit of this idea of transparency, is once you've both verbalized what oneness looks like, what we agree with, what we believe as a team, what's our central focus. The accountability part of it, you know, of oneness, is hey how you're currently acting or making a decision doesn't align with what we, what you say you believe and what we have agreed on. And we can kind of use those, those foundational things, again, if it's Christ, we can look at each other and be like, hey like that's not really aligning with what we believe in the Bible is it? Like we've said the Bible is a core value of our home and what we align our life with. So I like that you, you know, putting those things down, you guys both have agreed that those are who you are as a family, how you wanna lead, how you wanna live, it makes oneness a lot more practical instead of this ambiguous idea of like, okay, like yeah, we'll, you know, we'll have the same bank account, sure, which is another practical way, but it's not the only thing it's just a piece of the puzzle. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so-- And it takes time too. I wanna make a note like I think-- A life time, yeah. So many people sit down and they're like, hey, here's, we're gonna take this evening and we're gonna do our family vision statement and then we'll be done forever. And it took us probably three months to get our first draft and then we revisit it-- Kind of after big life things like if you, if you have children and you've never had children before so maybe some of your values, or just the way you wanna spend your time because you now have this other person-- Yes. You know, it changes everything and... Or you move geographically-- Right. Or you get a new job, or God calls you to something and you feel like it's stirring, but it hasn't quite started yet. Yeah, and take time to get there and then you can, you're free to revisit it. Right. So I just think that, I just wanna make sure that people don't feel like they need to get this ironed out in like one sitting-- Yeah. That's good. 'Cause it takes some time to think and pray over it and articulate the ideas. Well that's why we call it a mark of a marriage after God. It's not, it's a thing that we're aiming for. Yeah. Not a, oh we are today perfectly have it ironed out. Yeah. It's like, oh no, this is how we are gonna operate. Yeah. We're gonna think this way and pursue this direction because it's Biblical and it's gonna help us fulfill what God has for us. So as you guys have been pursing oneness in your marriage and being one and actively making choices as one, how have you seen that amplify your effectiveness in building God's kingdom? Oh man, in every meaningful way. Aaron you mentioned going out, right? If you don't feel like, maybe Jen says, hey yeah, go out and have fun or whatever and do something that you wanted to do how you almost don't even like it anymore 'cause she's not there. Yeah, it changes you. You'd rather be with your family. Like that, that sentiment I think, that's just a small I think shadow of truth in terms of that sentiment how it actually impacts your entire life-- Right. When you realize I don't wanna do anything, A, I don't wanna do anything that's not in lockstep with what God is doing, I wanna go where God is moving, I wanna be, I wanna move with him, right, and in that sense I want our family to be in unity and doing that too. Like we, here's a really silly example, but we needed to buy a vehicle-- Yeah. The last year, about a year and a half ago, and it's a big purchase-- I know I hate it, I hate those decisions. You know next to a house it's probably one of the bigger-- It's hard. Yeah, yeah, and we had been kind of wracking our brains, we'd had been, you know, a one-vehicle family, but we had just, we had just had our second daughter and so it was time. It was time to like, to actually face this decision and we just didn't have peace on it, didn't have peace. And it was probably like six months of Selena looking at different cars, looking at different, you know, all the different specs and the different prices and where to get it and all that kind of stuff until finally we had all this stuff, kind of like here's our priorities, we had all that out so we knew what we were looking for we weren't gonna go and just spend a bunch of money. We had an actual like-- Budget. Budget-- Budget envision for the car. Anyway when that decision finally came to make that decision God was so faithful and provided just this really obscure way for us to find the exact right vehicle that he, that was what we were looking for. Wow. And we do think it's a little grace of God to make that plain to us in what happened and that was so easy by the time that, that we felt like we were in unity in that together and we were in lockstep with him that we just walked up and we drove it and we just said, yeah, we'll take it. It was like, there was very little like haggling, all that kind of stuff, it was already there-- Yeah. And so I feel like that happens in big decisions too if you're in ministry right? So you're trying to make a decision in ministry and you find unity, that's where you're just, your heart is only at peace in unity when you get to that place. And peace and unity, I think that's, I mean isn't that the essential definition of peace? Right. There's no chaos, there's no division, I love that. That's so good man, it's so true. Alright, so one of the other seven marks of a marriage after God is transparency. So what does transparency look like in your marriage? We kind of live by this lights on, windows open, doors open, sort of theme. That kind of sets the tone for, not only our marriage, but for our household, we, you know, there's no secrets. There might be some surprises here and there, but we really try to be intentional about like our vocabulary. But the whole transparency thing I think has become a greater peace to our life because of, you know, things like social media and posturing and kind of showing our best moments-- Yeah. And not really being transparent and honest about what our life looks like. You know, how many times do you meet somebody that you maybe have seen on Instagram and you're like, whoa, you're like way different than what I thought. Yeah. You're You're, oh just like me. Yeah, you're normal. Oh good. Yeah and I think that it's so important especially, you know, in unifying us, transparency is such a huge component because if I, if we're not honest with each other about kind of our ugly and about the sin that we face and the dark corners of our heart that we just don't wanna show to anybody, we're not allowing our spouse that space to truly love us and we're not allowing ourselves to live in that freedom that God's calling us to when we are in the light and God sees all that, he knows. We always talk about, right, we're always talking about like when we sin, like God doesn't, he sees the sin, but he also sees the deep motivation of that sin and he still loves us. He knows the depth of why it happened, why we made those decisions and that love is so liberating to us, right, it should be because he's leading us down this path of being known and fully loved, right, and being committed. And so transparency is, I don't think you can have full unity and full oneness without complete transparency. Yeah. I'm gonna be bold there and say that. That's why we tied these two marks together is 'cause we believe the same thing that they're so closely tied. Yeah, and it's, if you're not completely transparent I think it does also hinder your ability to experience and express love. And what I mean by that is that if I, if I say, hey Selena I love you, here's this part of my life that you get to see, but I keep part of it to myself, whether it's shame or a sin, or habitual sin, you know, for guys it's, you know pornography is always a big thing, right, or some sort of thing that I'm hiding from you. Whenever you say, oh I love you as my wife, I'll always be like, yeah, but if you, in my head I'll be like if you really knew me you wouldn't love me. So I'm not gonna, I can't, you don't actually love me, right? It kind of invalidates, until you actually say, here's everything that I've, all my good, bad, and the ugly, and so until you actually do that you're not gonna experience what it means to actually be loved as deeply as I feel we were called to. You know you asked, how does this actually play out? So Aaron I know you've shared some of your, you guys have shared your story with pornography and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. God is very redemptive when we repent and turn from that sin and run to him and run to each other, right? And that's, so the way we do that in our marriage is, you know, that's a guy and anybody who's on the internet you have to be on guard always for like sexual sin, just guy or girl, like you have to be on guard because there's always, always different ways that it gets in front of your face, right, you never even try to get it. And so I, we have an open kind of conversation always where she, the rule is you can ask me, she can ask me anything, anything and I just, I promised no matter how hard it is I'll never lie, right, and that's easier said then done, but it gets easier and easier and so. And then there's obviously open, you know, we have the phone-drop test is another fun little tool that we tell couples about is that at any moment you should drop your phone on the table and your spouse should be able to open that up and go through every app, every email, every text, everything. Oh yeah. I've never heard that term before, but I like that term. You know we've never done that term, we do that, like we know each other's passwords, there's never any-- Yep. Giving that permission. Yeah there, we, yeah we use the word permission if she wants she can grab my phone and-- But I like that, the drop the phone test. And it's not, and the thing distinguishes couples 'cause a lot of couples would be like, well what about my privacy, you know, and A, you don't have privacy in marriage. That's the opposite of, that's the opposite of transparency. And when But B, it's not about, it's not about you're losing privacy it's about building trust and so you kind of, we flip it on it's head and that it's about showing you have nothing to hide as opposed to like, I should be able to hide something if I want to, like that's what privacy, that's all privacy is. Right. And in marriage there's none of that. And there's two stark contrasts in this idea of like, you know, you say, 'cause we've had couples say the same thing, like well, you know, that's just not, there's no trust there if they have to check my phone. But if you even have that heart in the first place you are hiding something, and right, and so if I'm telling my wife, hey, I want to walk in purity and holiness before my father in heaven and God has given you as my helper and therefore you have permission at any time to walk with me and help me be this, that man. That's a different position of, well you should just trust me and you shouldn't have to look at my phone. It's humility versus pride. Right. It's a whole different posture. And what happens is, my wife rarely has a desire to do that unless she has a spirit like, you know, hey there's something I'm discerning that, you just seem off, are you walking okay? And usually she doesn't even have to look at my phone where I am at, like you're saying, I confess, right? Um-hum, yeah. Because my purpose is not to just remove the shame and feel better in my marriage I actually fear God and want to please him. And so it's such, it's such a different mentality of just protecting my flesh versus, no actually I wanna be made like Christ. And-- Yep, just nailed it. Wow, wow. Yeah, so transparency is an important, actually when I asked the question I was thinking about this idea of transparency. And the point of transparency is to see through and, you know, if we're lights in this world, the light doesn't come from us it comes from Christ and the more opaque we are, like the harder to see through we are, the less light can emit from us. The less that light can be seen in us because you can't see through us to Christ-- Yeah. And I feel like that needs to be first exemplified in marriage and it's-- So if you're not transparent you're not being effective for spreading the gospel. Well you can't-- Yep. You're a liar. And actuallY this mental, so you just hit the nail on the head in terms something we are right in the thick of. Yeah. Because we, you've used all the buzz words Aaron, it's so funny. I don't know if you're reading my mail or what, but we are writing a new book, it's totally, we're writing a new book called, See Through, and it's that-- Wow. That whole attitude of we are called to not be opaque, but to be see through, transparent, and to-- So that God's light can shine-- God' light shines through us-- Oh yes. Albeit imperfectly. Yeah. Because we see it currently dimly, yeah. In a stained-glass window, right, you've got different colors, different shapes, different fractures, but it ends up being a beautiful picture because God's light is what makes it beautiful, even more beautiful than if we were perfect and, you know, and perfectly clear, right? He somehow uses our sin to make himself more glorified and more known because we live in a sin-filled world, but he's redeeming it right? And so you're absolutely, you nailed it, it's like that idea of being totally, of being not opaque, being see-through and letting God shine through you. I mean that's, that's what transparency is all about it's not about how can I just have what I want it's how can I be a vessel through which God shines. It's awesome. That's so powerful you guys. Thank you so much for sharing that and now I'm really excited to read that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if our publisher's gonna be mad at us for saying that or not. It's not official-- It's not an official name. If we're writing the book it's the unofficial name, so. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that, oh man so I think, yeah I just also think, just in the terms of marriage, a mark of a marriage after God. When we're not transparent we're not, we're pursuing ourselves, right, you know, because if I'm hiding sin, or if I'm hiding, you know, experiences in my life or things I'm going through, like you said, all we're doing is masking and we're covering up and we're trying to present ourselves a certain way. So we're not actually after God at all, we're after ourselves, and avoiding some discomfort or some pain, and so the picture we're trying to show, that opaqueness, we're just trying to show, we're manufacturing something which is not love at all 'cause I'm not letting my wife love me I'm letting her love a picture of me. You know and I'm not loving her by hiding who I am. I'm hiding, we're hiding the truth which is unloving, so, and, so I just love that you guys are advocates of that, that you not only advocate it, but you walk it out. We found it to be transformational on a personal level, both my relationship with, our relationship as spouses, but also our relationship with friends of the same sex-- Oh yeah. Right, that's transformational in that sense as well, but also in community with other families and other couples. We've had some really, some of the most transformational and brutal conversations that we've had have been in context of church community and that's such a big part of transparency. I think a lot of couples have kind of forsaken that part of the church, right? They kind of figure church is a Sunday morning thing, it's a Easter and Christmas thing, it's a check the box on a demographic-quiz thing, like I'm a Christian. But like that's how, that's how we're called to live in Christian community, right, and so transparency there, like we can never, we always push couples like, we consider ourselves like air-traffic controllers, right, people that come to us for answers-- Yeah. We're just like, we just point them to Christian community-- Exactly. 'Cause that's how you can move through it. Can you share some of the benefit for those listening, like what's the benefit of being transparent with other believers? So your holiness and righteousness, you know, unto the Lord I think is the biggest benefit because they'll be able to look at your life more objectively. Well and as a marriage we kinda, some friends of ours, we kind of walk, we go to them when we have kind of a struggle and we can't seem to figure it out, we feel a little stuck. And we'll go to them knowing that, you know, when you have dinner with another couple you're gonna heed your words a little bit more, right, you're gonna-- And you're gonna filter a little bit more, yeah. You're gonna have that, you're gonna make sure you're saying what you want to say-- What you mean to say not just-- Yes, what you feel like saying. And so, but having those, having that couple that we know is grounded in the gospel, that knows the word, that is in tune with the spirit, that loves the Lord and wants, they're advocating for us, they're not trying to pin us against each other, but they're advocating for our relationship, that's huge. And they love us. And they love us-- Yeah. And they know us and we want them to know us. Like we want to be known by them-- Yeah. Cause we can't see, we're stuck-- Yeah. We can't seem to figure this out we need our community, we need them to point us back to Jesus, point us back to the word, the Bible, ask us the hard questions and in love knowing that we're gonna get past this we're gonna get through this. In our little circle of church we have this, we turned the word gospel into a verb, right, so when somebody's like forgetting who they are in Christ we'll say-- Yeah, preach the gospel. We'll just gospel you for a second. Yes. We'll remind you-- Yeah. That God is good, that he's sovereign, and he's gracious and he's working in this and that's just so often, like being transparent. If you go, like most church groups you go to, you're just like, oh let's talk through the curriculum, let's talk through the study and we'll just go home and we'll have-- Yeah what are you learning there? We'll have food and we'll go home. But man church community is so much more then that. You say, hey how are you actually means, how are you doing, not just an excuse for you to say good, busy, right? Yeah. And then for the listener to sit there and actually listen and wait, you know, even if that means you have to wait a little bit longer instead of just passing by. Right because you truly are asking, not just facetiously or, you know, it's the norm. Yeah. You know, oh hey, how's it going? Yeah. You know I think about, you know, the reason we bring this up, the purpose of you guys being one in your marriage and being transparent in your marriage and all of the other marks that we talk about in the book, isn't just for your marriage, that's the place you practice doing exactly what you just said, because we're commanded in the word of God to be in one mind and spirit with the body of Christ. And in the same way you can't be one with your wife without being transparent and you can't be one with your husband without being transparent and you can't have that unified, unification, without that singleness of mission. It's the same thing in the body of Christ, what you're exactly saying, is the whole reason it's important for us to have this mentality in our homes. Yeah. Yeah, well how you love Christ's bride, how you love Christ if you don't love his bride, right? You can't it's impossible. No, you can't, that's why I get so-- Yeah, John tells us we are liars if we say that we love God and don't love his people. Right, right, that's why I get so just, I think furious is the right word, when you see like Christians that are just constantly just kind of making satire, making fun of the local church, right? I know that Christians are weird in some regards-- Good, yeah we, should be a difference. In a lot of cultural things. And then kind of make, their cringey, right, but there's also like, this is the, this is the bride of Christ and so there's, there always has to be that edifying kind of redemptive side to those types of conversations. And so, yeah, I think in your marriage this is just, yeah, that's why I love marriage, it's a mirror of the gospel in so many different, it's like a multifaceted diamond, right? Yeah, yeah. There you go. It's just, you see 'em at different angles and you see the gospel in it and that's one of the things is when you learn how to, you know, be transparent with your wife and with each other in marriage and that kind of gives you an idea of what it's like to be transparent with Christ's bride, with the church, right, and actually live in vulnerability, not just so you can look, you know, navel gaze and feel bad about yourselves and go home and be ashamed, but so that you can work toward righteousness, so you can be known, and so you can experience-- Yeah. A greater depth of grace and love, right? That's so good. You guys are such good encouragers and advocates for marriage online through your ministry, through your resources and everything. One quote that stood out to me that you guys had posted awhile back said this, "transparency, the best opportunity for intimacy happens when you're fully known and fully loved." And I just love that, I love the way you worded it, I love everything about it, and I think so many people are craving that right now. They're craving intimacy, they wanna be fully loved and maybe they don't know how to be fully known because they're afraid. And so I just wanna ask, how would you encourage those listening today, those people who want to experience this intimacy whether it's with God, with their spouse, with other believers, but they're afraid or something's holding them back, what would you say to them? Well I think it's important to,, excuse me, know what God's word says, you know, about fear and how perfect love drives out fear, there's no fear in perfect love. And so understanding that, you know, first of all we are loved, we are loved in Christ, and our identity can be rooted there because of what he's done and because of who he is. Yep. And,, excuse me, because he loves us, he knows us fully and completely and he loves us fully and completely and it's unconditional and he knows the depths of our souls and he still loves us and that's, and I think that's such an example and model for us, right, because only like, I don't, I don't feel any more experienced love like Christ to the extent, I can't, I don't know how I'm trying to say this, I experience it to the extent that I'm like transparent and known, right? Right. The more that I'm known the more that I am able to show my weaknesses and confess pride or, you know, just my anger or whatever. The more I, I am hopeful of, like your love Ryan, but hopeful also and knowing and just being able to rest in the fact that God loves me still, even in this moment and he's still like, while we were still sinners he died. Yep. Yeah. Wow. That reality is I think the path, understanding that full reality is the path toward the side of transparency that, that will get you to that side of feeling fully loved, right? So-- Yeah. That fear, and Selena you're speaking to it so well, is that fear is what keeps us from taking that leap because we feel like, well what if I jump and they don't love me? Yeah. Yeah. Or what if I jump and my spouse can never forgive me-- Yeah. Or our relationship's never the same and to be honest it probably will never be the same, but if we trust God it will be better. Yeah. It will be different and better. And how powerful. And there's joy. And how powerful it is when we do and we are transparent and we are still loved. It's such a powerful experience. Yeah, I think of that scripture that says, he who has been forgiven much loves much. And I-- That's the one I was trying to think of And I often, but I've often thought of it as like, oh, maybe I struggle with love because I didn't have much to be forgiven of and other people have and, but that's not what that scripture says. The scripture is saying, he who loves much, or he who has been forgiven much loves much, and the idea is that we all have been forgiven like that man who owed the ten thousand talents to that ruler. We are not the other one, we are the one that owes the unfathomable amount and so-- It's like 70 billion. Yeah whatever it is. Dollars equivalent or something. And the point is, is the one who recognizes how much he has been forgiven loves much. And that often-- Yeah. That has to be, you know, it says Jesus knows us, or he wants to know us, right? And we become known by confession, by transparency, by say, Lord this is who I am. And he already knows all, right, so, but he wants us-- To offer it. To offer it to him, like here is who I am, here's what I've done, here's how I think, change me, have it, you know. Right. Well it goes all the way back to the garden, right, when Adam and Eve sinned and they're hiding-- I know. And God's walking in the garden and says, where are you, it's not that he like, he lost them, he wasn't like, oh shoot, where'd they go? They ran away-- He wants them to reveal themselves. They got out of the cage. Like he wants us to have-- Recognize. That realization-- Yeah. Of our depth of need and that's what we call, I mean it's not just us calling it, but it's the full gospel, right? Yeah. Yep. The gospel is two parts, one I am extremely sinful, lost, and without hope, that's the first part. Then, so that's the bad news which makes, makes room for the good news, makes way for the good news which is, Christ has paid that price, he has brought you close, he has given you hope, he has saved you. And so if you can picture with me like a ramp that's going up, like if that's our view of God, the holiness of God, and then a ramp that's going down is our view of ourself, right, our view of our need and our depravity without Christ. The gap that it creates in between the top of the ramp and the bottom of the ramp, I'm looking, it's like a big PAC-Man thing, and that gap is the need for our savior. So the greater view of God the lower view of ourselves, the greater the need for a cross, or Christ, to fill that gap to make, and so that makes much of Christ, right? And less of us. And so if you-- Yeah. And less of us, and so it makes for a really big cross. So if minimize God's holiness we minimize our sin, we have a tiny Jesus. We have an impotent Jesus. Yeah. Right and so that's, that's how I think we overcome that fear and realize like, this fear that I have of being rejected is no match to the fear that I have without Christ, but I've been given Christ. Praise God. I have identity with him and therefore I can be transparent with you trusting that my identify is secure in him regardless of what happens here and he will work it for my good, right, Romans 8:28. Thanks for preaching the gospel man. We, you know, that's been on our hearts more is just more and more preaching of the gospel, we just, we need people to recognize that we are sinners-- Yes. And we are retched and we deserve nothing and yet God loved us so much he sent his son to save us if we believe in his name, you know? Changes everything. Oh yeah. So I wanna ask you a last question before we close in prayer. In your own words-- Sure. What is a marriage after God? I'd say a marriage after God is one that is obviously Christ-centered and is transparent and unified and on mission to make his name great. Praise God. You just used all the buzz words right there. There you go. I've been keeping notes. Buzz words are good, yeah. No, I fully agree with that. I think on mission is key, but the thing, that's a really loaded statement, right-- Yeah. When you're on mission that means so many different things. Transparency is one of those things, being unified in mission is one of those things. Self sacrifice. So. The gospel-- Yes. All of that. Yes. Yeah, Christ-centered and on mission and because of that transparent in all, all of the above so. Amen. So hopefully that answered the question. Yeah. Yeah no it's great. Thank you guys so much for being with us today this has been incredible. I just know that our listeners are walking away today with a lot to think about and hopefully feel inspired. Where can they follow you guys if they wanna hear more from you? Thank you guys, you guys are amazing, you've been a resource to us since day one. Yep. And it's just, man, we love. I love how the Bible just pours out of you guys. Yes. So good. Thank you. Even though we live five hours away I feel like, I feel like that's not an excuse, we should hang out a lot more. So it's on the record now you guys. Right. We'll see you this year. As far as resources go, we just, we have books at, fiercemarriage.com and, shop.fiercemarriage.com, just devotionals. We also have our podcast, The Fierce Marriage, podcast, so if people want us they'll find us. Yeah, just Google, Fierce Marriage, they're everywhere. Yes. There you go. Yeah, you guys have been doing this almost as long as we have, huh? No, you guys are the original gangsters. Yep. You guys were in like three or four years, before and Jen's the original gangster. Yeah Jennifer is, yeah. It has been awhile. Awesome. So Jennifer why don't you pray for us and then we'll close out. Okay, dear Lord we pray we would be husbands and wives who pursue intimacy with you. We pray we would make ourselves known to you and known to each other. Help us to walk with each other in an understanding way and to love unconditionally. Thank you for the gift of oneness in marriage and what it represents. We pray we would operate as one every day in our marriage relationship. Holy Spirit continue to empower us to do so. Help us to be transparent with one another. Help us to be great listeners as well. May truth be exposed and may your presence be evident in our lives. Thank you for marriage and thank you for salvation. You are a good God and we love you. May our hearts align with yours as we chase boldly after you and pursue a marriage that reflects your love story. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you everyone that's been listening to this episode. We love the Fredericks and we'd love for you to go check them out at their podcast, The Fierce Marriage podcast. And also get their books. Yeah. Their books are really good. And so, thanks for listening. We have a bunch of more episodes, a bunch of more interviews coming up in the coming weeks so please stay tuned. We'll see you next week. [Announcer] Did you enjoy today's show? If you did it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also if you're interested you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at, marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

NOTE: We don't share any graphic detials in this episode but this is not an episode to listen to around children. To support this podcast please pick up one of our marriage books at https://shop.marriageaftergod.com In this episode, I share my history with an addiction to pornography and how it affected Jennifer. Jennifer And I both discuss how it made her feel and how it affected every aspect of our marriage but ultimately how the Lord freed me from this sin. Our prayer is that by being open and vulnerable about this sensitive and taboo subject that a light would be shown and that many other men and women would find freedom and healing. READ: [Aaron] Hey we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God, [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna share our personal journey with pornography in our marriage. Welcome to the Marriage After God Podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith everyday. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. Love. And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Thank you all for joining us this week on our podcast and we just wanted to invite you to leave us a review. This is just one way to help us get the word out about the Marriage After God podcast and let's other people find us and we really appreciate it, it just encourages our hearts. We love 'em. [Jennifer] So if you could just scroll to the bottom of the podcast app and leave us a review. [Aaron] Yeah a star rating is the easiest way to do it. All you have to do is hit a star, but if you have extra time we'd love a text review as well. [Jennifer] Thank you guys. [Aaron] Hey we wanna thank you for joining us and we also want to invite you if you've been enjoying the podcast to consider supporting our podcast. And the way that you do that is go to shop.marriageaftergod.com and pick up one of our books that we've written. The ones we wanna talk about today is our 31 Prayers for My Husband and 31 Prayers for My Wife bundle. We call it our prayer challenge and we encourage couples to do it. Thousands of couples have already gone through the challenge and they've loved it. They go through it multiple times actually a year so go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, pick up a copy of our 31 Marriage Prayers Challenge and that would support our podcast, thank you. [Jennifer] Okay moving right along, we are gonna jump into our icebreaker question, which is which one of you said I love you first? [Aaron] That's an easy one. [Jennifer] Give them a second to guess. You guys guess. Jennifer. Who is me. I couldn't wait any longer. [Aaron] Did I actually say I love you back? [Jennifer] So what happened was we were, I don't know if we were on a date or just hanging out but I remember I was getting out of your car-- [Aaron] I'm up in front of your house by your red mailbox. [Jennifer] No, actually Aaron has a terrible memory. [Aaron]Oh, it's not right there? -We were-- Where was this at? [Jennifer] It's okay honey. I'm not mad. We were in the church parking lot. Oh, oh. I was getting out of your black Honda, and I was getting into my car. And I got out, and I stood up-- I remember now. [Jennifer] And then I leaned back in, and I said, "Oh, by the way, I love you." 'Cause I was waiting, waiting-- Did I skid away, and the door slammed shut, or? [Jennifer] No, that didn't happen. But you did let a very long pause happen before you said anything, and it made me feel super awkward, and I said, I might have even said, "Okay, I'm gonna go now," or something like that, and then you were like, "I'm just kidding." You start laughing and you're like, "I love you too." Almost as if I had already known, but you never said it. [Aaron] Well, you did already know. [Jennifer] Yeah, I did. But it was-- That's really funny I made you wait. It felt good to have said it, and I'm glad I said it. I don't remember-- Yeah and we say it a lot now. Yeah, I do love you. And I won't make you wait. I'll tell you all day every day. [Jennifer] All day every day? [Aaron]Yeah. Oh good. So Jennifer said I love you first, and then I made her wait a few seconds-- [Jennifer] Super awkward. Super long seconds. And then you laughed, and then you said I love you back. [Aaron] Yeah. All right. So why don't we do a quick quote from a book. Okay. And this book is your book. [Jennifer] Yeah, we chose one from The Unveiled Wife, so it's not a typical quote that we've kind of been sharing with you guys. It's a little bit more personal. Okay this is found in The Unveiled Wife on page 153, and it says, "We were devoted to making ourselves "known to God and known to each other. "I finally felt free from the bondage "that was holding me captive. "I could breathe deeply without fear "of someone finding out who I was "because I had chosen to make myself known." [Aaron] And this was a part of our story where we were divulging to each other our deep dark secrets. Where we were sharing our sins, things we were struggling with. Actually, divulged everything. Talked about everything in our hearts. That was a pretty pivotal moment in our marriage. And that goes into what we're gonna be talking about, that's why we picked the quote because we're gonna be talking about that season of our marriage, we're gonna be talking about a pretty large season actually, of my life, and it has to do with pornography. [Jennifer] Yeah, which I actually, well we both didn't wanna do this episode. [Aaron] We've been putting it off for months. [Jennifer] Because I don't know why, it's just, I think it's one of those topics that's hard to dive into and expose, but like that quote said, I chose to make myself known, in our marriage, you've chose to make yourself known, and I've, I believe that that created a safe place for trust to be built, and I think it's really important for husbands and wives to hear our story and to hear, just to hear how we've exposed our hearts to each other, and hopefully they could do that too. [Aaron] And not only have we exposed it to each other, but we've exposed it to others. We've exposed the things that we've gone through, our dark secrets to other believers and through our platforms, there are ministries of the world. And one of the things that I love about how we are, you use the word expose, I love that word. The Bible tells us to drag that which is in the darkness into the light because that which is in the light becomes light. And that was our sin. The more it was hidden, the easier it was to keep doin' it. And so we've been draggin' it out ever since and keeping it out in public, keeping it out in the light so that it doesn't live in us. So I wanna start off by reading a scripture. And it's in Ephesians five verse three. It says, "But sexual immorality and all impurity "or covetousness must not even be named among you, "as is proper among saints." Paul's telling the Ephesians, you're saints, you're saints of the most high, and sexual morality and impurity and covetousness, they should not even be named among you. Meaning not even a little bit. In other translations it says there shouldn't be a hint of sexual morality. That's insane. Because in our current culture, in our current world, in my own life experience, I had not just a hint of sexual morality in my life, I was drenched in sexual morality. And Ephesians five verse three is very clear and it's, this isn't the only scripture that talks about this, that there shouldn't even be a hint of it among Christians. [Jennifer] Which is so weird because I mean, through our online platforms, we've shared about the topic of pornography before, and people even Christians, have shared their acceptance of it. And I think we're living in a culture, in an age where it's widely accepted even if people aren't talking about it. [Aaron] Yeah, we're desensitized to the grotesqueness of our sin. [Jennifer] Which is another reason why we knew we had to do this episode. We need to be willing to talk about it. [Aaron] Yeah, pretty much every time we've ever posted about pornography and how it's wrong, and shouldn't even be in a marriage, and how, and not that we're coming from perfection, we're coming from, well actually no, we've experienced this, it's wrong, and the Bible says we shouldn't do it, and God hates it. Christians, people claiming to be Christians in our comments will say, "Well, you're wrong actually, it's fine as long as." And then fill in the blank. And I'm like blown away. But we shouldn't be surprised by that 'cause the world's being, the world's gonna be deceived. So our heart today is to expose our story, and I hope my, our prayer we just prayed before this is that you listening, if this is your story, would begin to walk in freedom today. So that it, that sexual morality and impurity and covetousness might not even be named in your marriage. That there would be no hint of it. And so let's start, we're gonna start with my experience, and there's a bunch of questions I'm gonna answer and, but before we go to some of the questions I'm gonna answer about my experience with pornography and where it came from and how I walked in it and my story behind that, I just wanna read a letter I wrote to pornography in 2014. And it's on my blog, and it says this. "Dear pornography, "We have known each other since I was a child "and I feel as though I can tell you things "that I can never tell anyone else. "You know all my secrets and all my fantasies, "and you have been by my side "in the good times and in the bad. "You spent time with me when I was lonely or bored, "and you comforted me when I was angry or hurt. "It feels like you have always been there for me, "but I need to get a few things off my chest. "You promised me that after I got married, "I wouldn't need you anymore. "You made me believe that what we had was just a fling. "I realize now that you never loved me. "I am finally seeing your endgame. "You have stolen a piece of me like a master thief. "You wanted everything from me, not just my eyes, "but also my mind, heart, soul and strength. "You have promised a world to me that doesn't exist. "You have threatened my marriage and my children. "You have hurt my friends and family, "you have destroyed the lives of girls, boys, men and women "all over the world and used me to help. "All the while assuring me that no one would get hurt. "Our relationship has been nothing but lies. "You are not, nor have you ever been my friend. "You are the reason I have lived "with so much shame and embarrassment. "You are the reason my wife has been so hurt. "You have warped my perception of women in the world. "I needed to write you this letter "to let you know that it's over. "I would tell you in person, "but that would give you too much satisfaction. "I have found a true friend, his name is Jesus." I wrote this letter a long time ago and posted it. It resonated with a ton of people. It got 4,000 shares. And it was just me verbalizing out loud the relationship I had with pornography, so that I made it real. I was like oh, I don't wanna pretend like, oh, I'm just struggling and this that, like I actually verbalized what it was that I, how I related to it. [Jennifer] It actually makes me really sad just hearing you read it out loud, 'cause it makes it even more so feel like such an intimate thing, such an intimate relationship that you had with this thing, and I just, I, makes me heartbroken over the many people who are doing it, who are addicted to it, who have this kind of relationship with it. [Aaron] And it's true it's a lie. And it, in reality, it destroys us, it leads to death, and it destroys the people that, were, are being consumed by it, in the images. And it, do we care about those people? Do we care about ourselves, do we care about our families? And we need to consider those things. So I'm gonna be getting into some information about kind of where it started with me, and if you have questions as we go, Jennifer, you can ask me. How old was I when I was exposed first to pornography? I actually don't know. I feel like maybe seven, eight years old. I can't, I don't have a very good memory of my younger years. But I do remember one of the first experiences I had with it was I was walking home from school and I found a, it was like a playing card on the ground with a nude woman on it, and I remember keeping it. And I remember that being my first experience with it. I don't remember how I got connected on the internet with it, I don't remember how I've seen it on TV, but I've been exposed to pornography for many, many, many years. And not just exposed to it, but I've exposed myself to it and craved it, and sought after it since a very young age. And it went with me, I literally thought when I was younger that all I need to do is get married and it would fix my lustful cravings. 'Cause it, what they did was they, being exposed so young and right at that, puberty, when I'm already gonna be naturally more hormonal, and more testosterone, and all those things that come with puberty, I, it was heightened, extremely from a young age. And it just continued on until even, into marriage. [Jennifer] I actually remember before we got married, we did talk about that aspect of feeling like, 'cause you admitted to me that you struggled, pornography, and I also wrote it off as like well doesn't every guy do that? That was my perspective of it. And we both believed that it would be like a non-issue when we got married, that it would just go away. [Aaron] Right, so while we were dating, you had no red flags about it. [Jennifer] I mean, I hated it then and it hurt me then, but I figured marriage would be the solution. [Aaron] Well what you said was that you thought, well, I guess every guy struggles with that, and we'll just, when we get married we'll walk together and we'll figure it out, and it'll be fixed. And I actually believed that too, but I was so entrenched in it that I couldn't imagine men not struggling with it, and I think there was two reasons I did that. One, pretty much everything I heard from other believers, and pastors, and mentors was like, well yeah, everyone struggles with that and there's that book, Every Man's Battle, like we, that's the thing we've heard about this, so I just believed literally every man struggled with it and it was normal. Yeah, it was wrong, and we shouldn't do it, and I felt shameful, and I should be better at it, but I wasn't actually ever told by anyone that I didn't have to do it, that I wasn't slave to it, that as a believer I could walk in freedom from it, and that it was gonna destroy me. I don't remember hearing that ever. I remember how it made me feel. [Jennifer] How did it make you feel? [Aaron] Well,it made me feel gross. I hated that I couldn't stop it, probably like any addict. Like why do I keep doing this? Why can't I stop? I feel like I have no control. But then at the same time, I wanted it, I enjoyed it, I loved it, I couldn't say that out loud. When I would talk about it, it was always like, "I hate this, I don't wanna do this anymore." But internally, I really did love it, even though I didn't recognize that back then. And I can't remember ever having a real conversation about sexual purity. I remember being told I shouldn't have sex before marriage, I remember being talked about it a little bit, but I don't remember purity discussion. I remember being caught a few times with pornography and having a short discussion of how it's not good and we shouldn't do that, but I couldn't, I don't remember having these serious discussions of this can't happen. It is going to destroy you. You need to stop. I don't remember that. And it maybe did happen, but I don't remember it being, it wasn't memorable for me. It wasn't something that changed my direction from anyone, my parents, from pastors-- Youth pastors, yeah. [Aaron] Friends. In reality, even when I would try and, ways I would try and deal with it was just abstinence. Like, well I'm just gonna try and go, oh, I went a month. And I didn't mess up, was my term. I would have accountability partners. That's what we all do. But all my accountability partners also struggled with pornography and weren't changing. So all we would do was come together and commiserate and say, "Well, God's good, grace of God." Those kinds of things, but no one ever changed, no one ever had authority in my life to say like, "Hey, I'm walking in purity, you should too." I didn't, I actually didn't know anyone. I've never met someone back then that walked in purity, that didn't struggle with pornography, which gave me a very small world view actually. 'Cause I thought, I literally thought everyone struggled with it. And I'm sure there's people listening right now thinking like, "Well doesn't everyone?" No, everyone doesn't struggle with it. Many do, but it's a lie from Satan to believe that it's just the thing that everyone's gonna struggle with. [Jennifer] Well if we believe that everybody struggles with it, it just makes it more normal and then, like it's just-- Yeah, why change? [Jennifer] It's another justification for it, yeah. [Aaron] I would confess to God all the time, and just remember that God loves me, and remind myself. I would read scripture that would make me actually feel more shameful because I'd be like, "Wait a minute, why don't, why doesn't my life "line up with what the Bible says?" Like shouldn't it? Shouldn't, when I read this, oh, that's what a believer is. I would have to in round about ways work around what the Bible says to be who I was, as a quote unquote, Christian. Which is wrong, 'cause we're supposed to align our lives with what the Bible says not with how we feel, and then try and make the Bible fit into that, which is what I had to do because it, my life didn't line up with it at all. [Jennifer] So then we got married, and it didn't stop. [Aaron] No, it actually, I feel like at times, it got worse. [Jennifer] Well just to catch people up on our story, the first four years of our marriage, actually it's kind of humorous now that I think about it with your addiction, our biggest struggle was-- Sex. Sex. And-- Yeah, I remember telling God like, "God, just give me a wife, "I just wanna be able to have sex with my wife, "and I'll stop doing this." And then,gettin' married, and it's literally-- [Jennifer] The hardest thing possible. [Aaron] The thing that we can't do. [Jennifer] So I experienced excruciating pain every time we tried, and so for four years, our marriage just got tougher and tougher as far as our relationship because of this issue. And because we weren't coming together and being, experiencing that part of our relationship, you dove even further into-- I-- Pornography. [Aaron] Definitely used it as a excuse and a justification. 'Cause I thought to myself, like well I can't even have the one person I should be able to have, so, I got this over here. And it was wrong, completely wrong. But looking back, God absolutely used our struggle with sex to show the depravity in my own heart, and yours-- I was gonna say both of us. About lust, pornography, and these things-- [Jennifer] I'm like a lot of that is sin. Sexual, yeah lots of things. But He's, He was definitely saying like, "I don't want any of this." And He was willing to discipline us, and I believe that's what it was. I believe that that season of our life was discipline because He's like, "You're My children." And He says, "I discipline those who I love, "and I love you." And I, He was done with us walking our own way, and walking in that sort of sin, and, now I can't say like, we walked free from it, and then boom, we were healed. It was much more complex than that. But looking back, I know that's what God was doing in us. [Jennifer] So are you saying that we struggled with sexual intimacy because you struggled with pornography? [Aaron] I believe so, I believe that God was disciplining us, He was disciplining me. I told Him, the one thing I wanted was a wife I can have sex with, and He's like, "That's not gonna fix it." And it, and He, and I should be able to walk in freedom with Him, regardless if my marriage is perfect. I, it's not a justification, having a broken marriage, having a broken sex life, having these things that I think give me permission to break His heart, and His laws, and walk opposite of how He's called me to walk, when my greatest relationship should be with Him, which is what I've always said I have, like no, everything is about God, and I love God. And He's like, "Well," as Jesus says, "if you love Me, you'll keep My commands. "If you love Me," In 1 John, He says, "Those who practice righteousness "are righteous." And I wasn't practicing righteousness, I was, I had no integrity. When I was alone, I knew what I was gonna do, and you knew too. [Jennifer] I didn't trust you. [Aaron] No, I didn't trust myself. [Jennifer] I'd just go back to that point though, I wanna talk about trust, but I wanna go back to you saying that our, let's call it a drought, 'cause that's what it was, it was a sexual drought, and our marriage was correlated with this addiction to pornography, 'cause as much as I see that, I also know that it was layered because He used that time for so many other things, to reveal a lot to us. And I don't want that, I don't want them listening just to go, oh, that's kinda strange, but a cool little revelation, there was a lot more that-- [Aaron] Well of course, like God is infinite, and He orchestrated a lot of things in our life, for many purposes, to put us on this journey with this ministry, to make us, our unity and our oneness stronger, to use us in the lives of others, like lots of things to teach us things. [Jennifer] To teach us things, yeah. [Aaron] But it tells us that the, in the Bible that that our Father in Heaven disciplines His children. And if He didn't discipline us, we'd be illegitimate children. But because we're His children, He disciplines us. I just wanted to highlight that to show that we, in going through those things, that what our heart should be is to recognize what God's doing and that He loves us, and that He cares for us. It's that quota, He loves us the way we are, but loves us too much to leave us there, and so He changes us. And He draws us to Himself, and He makes us more like His son, Jesus. [Jennifer] He definitely used that time to do that in our life. [Aaron] Yeah. What for you, Jennifer, 'cause I brought this into my marriage, and I didn't know if you struggled with anything at the time, early in the marriage, but what did my addiction to pornography, how did it make you feel? How did you deal with it? What were some of the highlights, or lowlights, I should say-- [Jennifer] Yeah, I'm like, there were no highlights. [Aaron] From our, from that's part of our story? [Jennifer] Knowing that you struggled with this was painful, and I felt betrayed, as your wife. And there was a lot of deep hurt, a lot of pain, but what's interesting is also wrapped up in a lot of insecurity, and I felt like it was pointed back at me, as if I wasn't good enough for you. And so on top of the pain of betrayal and mistrust, there was also this layer of, "I'm not good enough for you and it's my fault." [Aaron] Right, like you're causing me to like, well, if I was prettier, or if could give him this-- [Jennifer] Or if my-- Part of my body. Yeah, if my body actually worked-- Yeah. [Jennifer] And we were experiencing an awesome sex life, maybe he wouldn't, maybe marriage would have fixed it. So then I felt at fault for it, and that was really painful. And so anytime that you confessed to me, or that the truth was exposed, I felt just as at fault for it. [Aaron] Yeah, and I remember you would say those sorts of things and I would try and like comfort you, and be like, "No, no, no, not at all, not at all." But what's unfortunate is I was only comforting you back then and trying to help you back then for the sake of my own shame. Like I didn't like that I made you feel that way, I didn't like that you responded that way, but instead of changing, I just tried to help you cope with it. Which is wrong of me, I wasn't a very good spiritual leader back then. [Jennifer] Well we didn't know back then, where I feel like spiritually, we were so immature that we didn't know how to navigate this right. [Aaron] We didn't have much close fellowship back then. We've talked about that in past episodes. Which would have helped us see it sooner probably, if we had people closer to us, knowing us. Not just people but spiritually mature people. People who would challenge this area of our life. But again, we have to expose it and we have to tell people how we're struggling if we want that kind of correction. Yeah, and we kind of-- Which most people don't. [Aaron] Kept it to ourselves. [Jennifer] So I also remember anytime that you would say, "Hey we have to talk," my heart would drop, 'cause I'd be waiting for the bomb, the truth bomb of like, "I have to confess again." And I hated that feeling, and my heart also ached with anxiety every time I left you at home alone because I just knew. [Aaron] You knew it was gonna come when you got back, yeah. [Jennifer] And when I did come home, and you told me you messed up, like you said you would say, it just affirmed my distrust in you. [Aaron] Were you ever surprised? No. Yeah, 'cause you knew I was gonna, which is such an unfortunate thing to make my wife only know that about me. That I'm not a trustworthy person, that I have no integrity, and she's gonna feel small, and insignificant because of something I'm choosing to do. And I think the reason, no I don't think, the reason we are getting real with this stuff, is because these are the things that aren't said to us. And so we can easily minimize what we're doing. I minimized it a lot with you. I would just be like, "Well it was only for a little bit here, "I, it was, like, it was nothing, it was not a big deal." And like, all I ever tried to do when I was apologizing to you was minimize the shame and the guilt that I saw in your face. And I deeply regret that part of our marriage, and the things that I walked in, that I didn't believe the truth that I've seen and read in the Bible that I thought that was for other people, not myself. I believed I was still trapped by it, even though I was a believer. I believed that I was still trapped in my sin. I believed that it had power over me that it didn't actually have. And I let it into our marriage. And in the Bible it tells us to keep the marriage very pure, and I didn't. And so I thank God that He showed me these things and He was patient with me because half the time, you feel like, "Man I'm surprised God just didn't strike me down." 'Cause like He's sovereign, He's a good God, but He's a just God, and man I justly deserved not what I've been given. The patience, and the reconciliation, and a wife who remained with me when you probably had a good reason and a good right to leave me, for breaking our vows so many times. Because the next truth we wanna make everyone listening realize is that pornography's not just, like oh, this little sin that I did over here, and like it's not a big deal, it's not attached to anything. The Bible tells us clear that sexual sin is special. It does something different to us because it's against our own bodies, and especially in marriage when you and your wife are one. [Jennifer] I was gonna say, it's against your oneness. [Aaron] It's against your body. It's against my wife, and this is the truth bomb, pornography is adultery. It's adultery. I was a cheater on my wife. I broke her trust time and time again. I broke faithfulness with her, and that's the reality, and if anyone's, that's listening right now is walking in this and is telling themselves, "Well, it's only every once in awhile. "It's not that big of a deal. "I can stop anytime." Whatever we, words we use, we are committing adultery on our spouse, and we are not practicing righteousness, and we are not walking in light as He is in the light. And those are truths that we need to say out loud, and we need to recognize them for what they are. [Jennifer] I just wanna be honest, this episode has been so hard for me, and I just feel like I, there's things that I wanna share, and then I get this lump in my throat, and my eyes start watering. We've had to stop three times just to pause so I can breathe. But pornography hurts. Pornography kills, and it kills oneness, and unity in marriage, it kills trust, it kills love, it kills-- [Aaron] Faith. [Jennifer] Faith, and-- [Aaron] It severs our relationship with the Father. [Jennifer] Yeah, it severs our relationship between husband and wife. Like our relationship was crumbling because of this. And I just, I feel so emotional I think, even sitting here listening again to our story because I know we're not the only ones who have been hurt by the pain of pornography. There are so many husbands and wives, maybe them listening right now, have walked this, or experiencing it, or maybe just last night, they had that hard conversation where they're in tears over it because they want it gone so badly, and it just keeps coming, and keeps coming, and keeps coming and it's gonna keep coming-- Or if they're about to have the conversation-- The enemy-- Today. The enemy hates marriage. The enemy hates what we're doing, and it's going to keep coming because he knows that it will destroy what we have. [Aaron] And I wanna, your words are powerful, but I wanna remind us that our words are powerful. And you keep saying "Pornography, it's coming, it's coming," as if it's something coming at us, and this is one of the lies I believed, that pornography was something happening to me. And when something happens to us, it's out of our control. Pornography was not happening to me. Yes, the same issue kept coming up and we had to keep dealing with it, but, and I'm not correcting you, Jennifer, but I want the people listening to not take anything we say and say, "See? "There it is, it's coming at me." [Jennifer] No, and when I said it's coming, I mean the enemy is dangling that temptation in front of us because he knows our flesh is weak. And we have to be willing to stand strong against it. [Aaron] And so if we think it's something happening to us, we'll never walk strong. It's something I believed. I believed it was a outward force that I had no control over. But it is not. 'Cause if that was the case, then no one's free. And the things that the Bible tells us are lies. Our encouragement to those listening is to believe the truth. Proclaim the truth, so confession, which is saying what's going on. Saying what you're doing. What you are choosing to do, which is the key. Not coming like, "Oh, it happened again. "Oh, I messed up again. "Oh, "I slipped and fell into this thing again now." Confessing that you chose again to cheat on your spouse, that you chose again to walk in unfaithfulness with your God. That's true confession. And then repentance is to turn the other way. I am no longer gonna choose to walk in that. Because if it's something that we accidentally fall into, if it's something that happens to us, then there is no need to repent because you don't know if you're gonna slip. You're walking on this journey, and you're just gonna fall into the pit by accident, and that's just your destiny. But that's actually not true because that goes against everything Jesus came to do on the cross. He came to set us free from the bonds of sin and death. And the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power that will bring life to our mortal bodies. That's what the Bible tells us. And in a little bit, we're gonna get through more scripture just so you listening can hear the truth about this. And I wanna bring up something, you said, Jennifer, that pornography hurts us, and it destroys us, and I wanna highlight one more truth, it was something that I never realized until I started walking in purity. And God was revealing to me who I was, and the things I was doing, is that pornography doesn't just hurt us, the ones consuming the pornography. We are literally condoning and cheering on, and paying for things that we would never condone, or cheer on, or pay for a Christian to do. And a lot of these men, women, whoever's in these videos or photos, many of them are forced into it. And even the ones that choose it, were literally saying, "Yeah, keep doin' that. "Keep doin' that." We're choosing to hold hands with someone to Hell, by the thing we are consuming. And if Christians would realize that, if I would have realized that earlier, would I have stopped? Maybe. If I woulda realized like, man, I'm actually like, partaking, participating in someone's journey, to a journey away from God. And it's easy for us to think like, well they're just things, it's just a video. Well no, those are people in those videos. Real people that are made in God's image. And I just hope that this is hitting home with those listening, I hope that people are hearing our hearts of concern and love, and are also being, having their eyes opened, and their hearts opened, and that true Godly repentance would come from this. [Jennifer] So I remember there was two pivotal moments in our marriage, that stand out to me. I think you'll know what I'm talking about, but they are pivotal because they helped you change in this area. And so I wanna share 'em so that those listening can be inspired by it and hopefully it, this, hopefully this moment right here becomes a pivotal moment for them. [Aaron] Amen, yeah. [Jennifer] So I remember it was just after we had Elliot, he was just a little baby, and I was sitting in a rocking chair midday, trying to rock him. And you were sitting at the desk in our bedroom, and you started telling me and confessing how you had-- -Again. [Jennifer] Messed up again. And normally, I mean, list an emotion, and I've expressed it. Tears, uncontrollably, like just all of it. Sadness-- All rightfully so, 'cause of what I've done to you. [Jennifer] But this time, I just sat pretty much gripping Elliot's little body, and patting his back, and my heart was just so burdened for you. And I remember-- It was actually your first time thinking about me in that way, because of what I was going through. [Jennifer] Yeah, yeah, like if tables were turned, yeah, putting myself in your shoes, but I just, I questioned you on your faithfulness to me. Because on the outside, we were Christians moving forward in our marriage and at this point, we actually had already been reconciled and determined to stay together. And you messed up again, and I questioned you on your faithfulness and I reminded you what scripture says about it being adultery, and I know you have already mentioned that today, but I remember just reminding you in this, in that moment that you were committing adultery against me. And I questioned how you would want our future to go, I questioned how you would want our son's future to go. [Aaron] I remember all this. You asked me if I actually feared God. You asked me if I actually loved God. You were challenging me at the core of what I was doing. Not just this one event, oh, I forgive you for the event, you told me like, you need to realize what you are doing Aaron. And I remember it was like, shocking. It was like oh my gosh. This is different first of all, 'cause usually I'm like looking forward to you, not looking forward to it, but I'm expecting an outburst, a reprimand-- A reprimand, yeah. [Aaron] "What, you did it again? "Don't you know how this makes me feel?" But you went from, you actually loved me, selflessly, 'cause even though you were totally hurt, you instead told me the truth in love. You said, "Aaron, you are committing adultery." And I think that was actually the first time I, we recognized that's what I was doing. I'm laughing 'cause I'm embarrassed. That was a pivotal moment, and that began actually, over the next few years, me walking in-- [Jennifer] The start of the true change. [Aaron] Like it, I did still have-- [Jennifer] A weakness. [Aaron] I still fell back into it, I don't wanna say fell back in it, I still chose it, but it was, it became much less, and much less, and then what the next event that happened was the straw that broke the camel's back. Like the, the like it was the thing like, so you opened my eyes to like, "Man, I have to change. "This is not okay what I'm doing." And then this next moment, I'm sitting in my car with our pastor and mentor, and he's, and we just had dinner and we were hangin' out, and he said, "Aaron, are you walkin' in purity?" And I said, "Well, no, recently I did this." 'Cause I wanna be honest, that I'm tryin' to walk in repentance and openness and light. And he says, "Well Aaron," he's like, "nothing's gonna change "until you believe the truth." He's like, "You need to believe the truth." And I said, "Well, what do you mean?" Because the way I talked was, oh, it happened to me again, I fell into, I stumbled into, oh, woe is me, like as if something was happening to me, so, 'cause I was still not thinking clearly about this even though you challenged me correctly. I still wasn't thinking clearly. And he said, "You are not a slave "to your addiction to pornography. "Pornography is not something that has control over you." Which I didn't believe when he was saying it, 'cause I believed it controlled me. And then he said, "And also, Aaron, "you need to admit and confess that you love your sin." He said, "You need to say it because you do." And I said, "I don't love it." And he's like, "Well, your actions are proving different. "You say with your mouth that you don't, "and then you say with your actions that you do." And it went right into my heart. And it was the first time in my life that I was able to say with my mouth out loud, that I actually loved pornography. And what that meant was is I actually was able to fully confess, 'cause before I was confessing about the fruit of my sin, not confessing the sin that I loved my lust. [Jennifer] Which if people are wondering, my response is I hate hearing it, I hate knowing it, I hate, I hate all of that, but I think it's necessary in order to overcome-- [Aaron] Well, a true confession is necessary, I had to be able to admit the truth, 'cause I was walking in lies. And the lies were keeping me in the darkness, and the lies were keeping me trapped, when the trap was my lies, it was, there was no trap. There was no chains, 'cause God broke those chains on the cross. And he's like, "You need to recognize that, "that that is the truth. "You have not stopped sinning because you love your sin." And so I, once he said it out loud and once I said it out loud, I realized, wait a minute, I don't want to love my sin. And so I confessed, "Lord, forgive me for my love of my sin, "and change me." And that was the last time. I think there was one other little time after that, that was, and I'm not trying to minimize, significantly different kind of sinning, but in the same area. And I confessed that out loud to Matt, and to you, and that was it. And it's been how many years now? [Jennifer] Five. [Aaron] Five. But those are the pivotal conversations, was you telling me the truth in love, and then another brother telling me the truth in love. Not, "Aw, sorry, yeah we all, we're all gonna struggle. "Let's just get back up, "and let's just try harder next time." But that's not, that is not what God's asking us to do. He's not asking us to try harder, He's asking us to walk in the truth. And the truth is, let's read some of these verses. The truth is, Galatians 5:1, "For freedom Christ has set us free; "stand firm therefore, "and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." And that's what I was doing, I kept submitting to a yoke of slavery that didn't exist. I was allowing a yoke to be put on me that didn't need to be there. So I'm free. That's what Christ came for, freedom. Would you read Romans 6:6? [Jennifer] "We know that our old self "was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin "might be brought to nothing, "so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin." [Aaron] Oh, so it's not that I have to try harder, I am not enslaved to sin. So I need to walk in the actual truth-- [Jennifer] Which is 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. "The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." [Aaron] So am I walking in this old self while pretending to be a new self? [Jennifer] Talk about a marriage fixing things. [Aaron] Yeah, and the marriage doesn't fix it, Christ has already fixed it. [Jennifer] No, the marriage of Christ, the being one. Oh, yeah, we're being one with the body of Christ, we're His bride, and it says that He's gonna come back to a pure white, and without blemish bride. That's who, that's what I'm a part of, that's who I am. That's who you are listening. [Jennifer] Yeah, how dare Him come back to a bride that's been-- [Aaron]Dancing in the mud, with her dress. [Jennifer] Sad. [Aaron] So those listening, your old self has been crucified. It's been crucified. Christ set us free on the cross. Ephesians 4:17 through 24, "Now this I say and testify in the Lord, "that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, "in the futility of their minds. "They are darkened in their understanding, "and alienated from the life of God "because of the ignorance that is in them," that was my life, I was walking as, He's telling Christians to not walk as Gentiles were, I was walking that way in my ignorance. "Alienated from the life of God "because of the ignorance that is in them, "due to their hardness of hearts. "They have become callous "and have given themselves up to sensuality, "greedy to practice every kind of impurity. "But this is not the way you learned Christ, "assuming that you have heard about him "and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, "to put off your old self," Aaron, put off your old self. "Which belongs to your former manner of life "and is corrupt through deceitful desires," I, that's crazy that it uses the word deceitful desires. They trick us, they're desires that are deceitful. "And to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, "and to put on the new self, "created after the likeness of God "in true righteousness and holiness." So my trying harder is actually just putting on the new self. Christ's likeness. 1 John 2:1, "My little children, "I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. "But if anyone does sin, "we have an advocate with the Father, "Jesus Christ the righteous." What's awesome about that is when we're walking in righteousness, and we stumble because we've chosen to, or we haven't, we weren't walking in the, we weren't walking in the Spirit, but we were walking in the flesh, we have an advocate. But the things that we're reading right now have been written so that we won't sin. So that we will actually walk in the truth. 1 John 2:28 and 29, "And now, little children, "abide in him, so that when he appears "we may have confidence and not shrink from him "in shame at his coming. "If you know that he is righteous, "you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness "has been born of him." I love that it says practice first of all, 'cause that that means is that we are not yet righteous, but we are becoming righteous. And as we practice it, we get better at it. So am I practicing my sinful desires and getting better at those things, or am I practicing righteousness and getting worse at my sinful desires? And that was, that's my life now, is I'm getting worse at my sinful desires and I'm actually getting better at avoiding temptation, and knowing what temptation is, and being strong under the temptation, and fleeing from the temptation, and talking about the temptation. And now encouraging others to do the same. [Jennifer] So actually I was gonna mention that, how you walk in authority now and challenge other believers, and I can be confident that you're gonna walk our children through these things, that you can teach them, and I don't know, I just, I love that you have this authority that you can say, "I've overcome this, you can too." [Aaron] Which is amazing, because when we see other people overcome something, it makes it that much more believable that we can. And so you're listening to this, and if you're thinking, "Man, I can't do that." Stop believing the lies, you have been set free by Christ. You have the power of the Holy Spirit in you. You've been given everything that pertains to life and Godliness, just like I have. I'm not special, I haven't been giving, given something that you haven't been given, Jennifer hasn't been given something that you haven't been given. We have Christ in us. We have, we could put on the new self, created after the likeness of God. [Jennifer] Something that we mention in our book coming out, Marriage After God, is that Jesus didn't come back to kind of save you, He came back to save you. [Aaron] He came back to fully save us, today, when Jesus teaches the disciples how to pray, He says, "Thy will be done on Earth, "as it is in Heaven." Which is cool because we can actually have His will on Earth, in our life. Now we haven't, our bodies are still gonna decay and we're gonna still see death, and these bodies are gonna fall apart because they're not yet redeemed. But you know what is fully redeemed? Our spirit. And He's renewing us day by day, and He's giving us a new mind, and new spirit, and He's, and through His word, and through walking in community, and through being, walking in light and truth, we can actually walk the way God has enabled us to walk. It tells us in Malachi, that He will write His laws on our hearts, on tablets of flesh. They're no longer on stones that can be broken, they're on hearts of flesh. His laws are written on our hearts, and not only has He showed us in our hearts how we can, how we should walk, but He's empowered us to do so through the power of His son and His spirit. I don't know, I hope that was vulnerable enough, and again, our prayer is that those listening, you, would not be freed from this addiction, and this struggle with sin, and pornography, but that you would recognize that you are free, and that you do not have to choose to be submitted to it. You don't have to choose it. You can choose actually to walk away, you could choose actually to turn the computer off, you can choose actually to put your phone down, you can choose to run away as fast as you can. We can choose that, and we are empowered to do so through the Holy Spirit. [Jennifer] So if this episode encourages them to go have a conversation, and there's confession and reconciliation, do you wanna share some things that we've learned over time that could help them? [Aaron] Yeah, I will say on my part, or for those that are going to do the confessing, and we talked about confession in one of our episodes, and they should go back and listen to that actually, don't minimize, meaning, well, it was just this, it wasn't as big as deal you think, it was only for a moment. Just say I did this. And then the second thing I would always try and do that I shouldn't do, was I tried to control your reaction. Please don't be mad, I know that I was wrong, please don't be sad, please don't be frustrated-- Or why are you crying. [Aaron] Or why are you crying. And so I, when I started walking in purity, I purposed that if I was gonna confess to you, I was just going to tell you what I did, when I did it, and then I was gonna be quiet. [Jennifer] And so on my part, I mean, as the person receiving the confession, something that I've learned is, well the first thing is, God created us with a lot of different range of emotions, but He created us with emotions. And so the first thing is acknowledging that you feel, and the second one is you're still called to have self-control in those feelings. And-- And you're allowed to have the feelings. And you're allowed to have those feelings, so you may cry, you may get angry, you may get all of the things, but you still are required to have self-control in them, and that doesn't mean that you just shut it off and you don't express those emotions, it just means that you don't sin in your emotions. And so I just wanted to share that as the counterpart to what you-- [Aaron] And on the person receiving the confession, the other spouse, your job is to not just love your spouse, but to speak truth in love. Like you did that day. You very calmly and lovingly said, "You are walking a very dangerous line. "You are committing adultery, "and you are harming our marriage, "and what you're doing will destroy us. "And you must change." [Jennifer] And then the biggest thing after all of that, is reconciliation. It should always be for the purpose of reconciliation and we hope that it's for reconciliation in your guy's marriages. [Aaron] And reconciliation can happen even though trust is still broken. Because the reconciliation is knowing that hey, we are still one, but we are going to work on this trust thing. Because you have hurt me and we're gonna walk it out together, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna avoid being healed, but it's going to take time and that's gotta be okay. Because it's not like a switch that gets flipped. There's been unfaithfulness, there's been brokenness, there's been sin, and there's consequences to that sin. But as a team, you walk towards healing and restoration, on both parties, and you do that by prayer, you do that by fasting, you do that by walking faithfully-- [Jennifer] And abiding in the word of God. [Aaron] And abiding in the word of God, and you also do that in community. You don't do it alone. If you're a brother dealing with this, you find other brothers that are gonna say, "Dude, stop it." That have authority in your life because they walk in purity also. If you're the wife, you find girls that are gonna be like, "You can't do this. "You need to walk in purity." And the goal is oneness, unity, healing, righteousness, holiness for the purpose that we always go back to is that God has a job for our marriages. He's got a ministry for us to do, and we will not be able to do it if we're stuck in sin. [Jennifer] Yeah, we need to be pure, and we need to present His bride, pure. [Aaron] And that's what we get to do, we get to purify ourselves, we get to practice righteousness, and we get to chase after God every day, and I just pray that this brings freedom today. I pray that hundreds, thousands of couples today would find not just healing, but realize the freedom that they have. And that they would be the ones that people look at and say, "I didn't know you could walk in freedom like that." And then they'll say, "Actually, this is what the Bible says." And they'll be able to help other Christians walk that way as well. [Jennifer] What an incredible ripple effect for the body of Christ. Oh yeah. [Jennifer] Well thank you guys so much for joining us on this episode. It was, it was vulnerable, and I appreciate you sharing, Aaron. And I can see that there's probably gonna be a lot of questions, probably come up from this. Probably. [Jennifer] And we might have to do another episode, but that's okay. But we do wanna invite you guys to pray with us, and close out the episode with this prayer from Aaron. [Aaron] Dear Lord, thank You for Your loving patience and kindness towards us. Thank You for Your mercy and forgiveness. Lord, I pray as Christian men and women we would practice walking in righteousness. I pray we would pursue purity, as You are pure. I pray that as Christian men and women who proclaim You to be Lord in our life, that we would not walk in this sin anymore. Change us, transform us, and cut out any dead flesh and wicked way that is in us. Help us to fear You and love You. Help us to see the truth about pornography, that it is destructive, sinful, immoral, and that it is adultery. Your word tells us that there should not even be a hint of sexual morality named among us as Christians. Help us to live with integrity, help us to be transparent and honest in marriage, help us to choose reconciliation over isolation in marriage. We are Your saints, and I pray we would walk in a manner worthy of Your call in our lives. In Jesus name, Amen. Thanks for joining us this week, and we look forward to what the Lord's gonna do in your life. And the testimonies that are gonna come from the truth that people heard today. [Jennifer] We'll see ya next week. [Aaron] Did you enjoy today's show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Ray Hoffman interviews Jennifer Collins, President and CEO of JDC Events. Jennifer’s first events were her own family reunions which she evolved from cookouts to city tours and dine-arounds. She worked on social events while in college, and when she started working at PR firms, she saw how they were handling events and felt that she could make a business of it. She turned to business events, and then to government contracting. Jennifer has taken what she has learned through planning purposeful events over the years and written it in her book, Events Spark Change. She shares the importance of the mission statement for every event and how events bring about change.   Key Takeaways: [:21] Ray Hoffman welcomes Jennifer Collins and asks about her book, Events Spark Change: A Guide to Designing Powerful and Engaging Events and the journey that brought her to becoming an event planner. [:34] Jennifer planned reunions for her family and felt she was good at it. [:43] About 100 people would normally attend the family reunions, held in Boston, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and other locations, first where they had a majority of the family and then where they wanted to go. [1:05] From that experience, Jennifer saw that she really loved the effect that the reunion had on the family — so joyful and so much of a connection. People felt that they were able to bond deeper on another level. That sparked Jennifer’s thought process about planning events, that she enjoyed it and she might be good at it. [1:38] These thoughts came to Jennifer while she was a college student at American University. After she graduated, she got jobs with public relations firms in Washington, D.C. [1:56] The first family reunion she planned was when she was around age 19 or 20 as a sophomore. Her grandmother from Atlanta and her siblings had originally organized the reunions as cookouts. The importance of families coming together is the impetus for Jennifer’s involvement in the reunions. [3:17] Later reunions included zip lines, tours, travel to different cities for activities, dine-arounds, and a lot more than cooking out. [3:37] The first professional event Jennifer planned was a 60th birthday party for a dear friend. She wanted to bring around 30 of her closest friends to Jamaica to celebrate it. That was during a time when Jennifer’s company was doing more social events. [4:10] Then Jennifer started getting away from social events and moved into corporate events. [4:17] When Jennifer started her company, she was employee #1 and the only employee for a while, in her basement apartment near American University. She enjoyed doing the work and was looking for events to plan for people who really needed the support. [4:43] From there, she was able to develop it into more, still part-time, in connection with her full-time work in the public relations firms. As the PR firms started doing events, Jennifer realized she could make that into a business. She wanted to develop something even more professional. [5:13] Jennifer managed her business on her own for four years, part-time. When she found it was too difficult to do part-time, she had to ‘fish or cut bait.’ [5:34] She went full-time on her own when she got one of the largest nursing home companies in the U.S. at that time as a client, who wanted to celebrate their sales team and build an incentive program. [5:48] That helped Jennifer to get out on her own. It was also two weeks before September 11, 2001. At that time, events stopped. Hospitality stopped. People stopped traveling and getting on planes. Jennifer lost the account, although they did pay her. The client felt, given the tone of the country, it wasn’t the best time to celebrate. [6:20] It took about three or four years for the industry to come back. So Jennifer was doing other things, such as substitute teaching, to stay on her own. She built up again, getting referrals from her former co-workers in the public relations firms. She decided to shift into the government contracting market for longer-term, higher-value contracts. [6:54] You have to ‘have a stomach for it’ to get into government contracting. Jennifer learned what kinds of certifications would be helpful to compete with other companies. She had to go to industry days to meet with contracting officials and small business representatives and figure out what agencies were buying. It was a lot of footwork. [7:29] Meanwhile, Jennifer continued in substitute teaching and started working with other companies as an onsite event manager. She got projects from a temp agency for event professionals. [8:09] Jennifer thought she knew a lot then, but she knows a whole heck of a lot more now. Jennifer has a very curious attitude. She always wants to know more — how to do something different, better, how to build it. [8:38] Jennifer got involved in industry organizations and became a certified meeting professional. She kept up with professional continuing education to learn how to plan events better. [9:13] UC Davis was looking for a planner in the D.C. area. They had a campus building in D.C. They wanted a planner for a cocoa symposium in partnership with Mars, Inc. Jennifer answered their ad, met with them, and “the rest is history.” [9:57] That was Jennifer’s breakthrough moment. It was the largest event and relationship she was able to develop up to that time, in 2005. [10:20] In 2005, Jennifer was just learning the extent of running a business with all its parts. She realized she could not do everything by herself. She had to bring in partners. She played many parts in her business to bring people together to build it. [11:20] She hadn’t accounted for the politics of dealing with different organizations and cultures to bridge people together to produce what they needed. Jennifer describes event building as a puzzle and the event planner as a conductor leading an orchestra. [12:10] Earlier in her business, Jennifer just looked at it as a task. She had a list and she had to check things off the list and get things done. She didn’t yet look at it as the picture of how everybody needed to work together. [12:34] Jennifer wrote in her book that an event without a mission statement is susceptible to failure. She explains the importance of the mission statement. Many organizations decide to have an event, but don’t work out what it takes to produce it. There are so many factors that go into it, especially money. [13:06] If you want an event to do something, you have to really get at the why, what it’s going to change, and whom it’s going to impact. [13:15] You have to set measurable goals. It’s like looking at a map. If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know that you were successful? [13:30] You have to really use this event as a way to drive your message. Events drive messages. If you’re not really able to drive it in a way that people will receive it, or understand what you want to impart to them, then it’s not going to be successful. [14:09] The cocoa symposium was an event where UC Davis and Mars Inc. wanted to be seen as the leaders within the cocoa science field. This symposium helped them position themselves as such. They took the symposium to Ghana where the majority of cocoa is grown.[14:51] From the symposium, the first plan was developed for Africa on how to make the cocoa farms more productive — how to provide the farms with the tools and skills needed and to make more money while all parts of the cocoa product chain could flourish. It was a defining moment for the partnership and for Jennifer to take part in it. [15:35] There are some who think the big, glitzy, glamorous events are only the most impactful. No matter how many people are involved, what’s most impactful is the event purpose — how they bring people together and create certain connections — how they can create engagement that can change lives and organizations. [16:25] The stakeholders of an event bring sponsorships, money, and credibility. Having a variety of event experts together creates impact. [17:06] What is the SPARK model? Sensory — engage the five senses to create a much more memorable and engaging experience. Purpose  — identify why you are doing this and what you want to achieve. Activations — put everything into motion. Resources — use the time, talent, funding, and venue. Know-how — bring experts and expertise. [18:49] Jennifer has spent the last 15 years learning the power of connections and that all it takes to create a change in this world is one person or one community at a time. Events help you to think differently and bring that change to help someone else. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. It’s what you can take away to help another.   Mentioned in This Episode: Jennifer Collins, JCD Events American University, Washington, D.C. Events Spark Change: A Guide to Designing Powerful and Engaging Events, by Jennifer D. Collins JDC Events UC Davis Mars, Inc. Stephens.com This Is Capitalism

So Jennifer's teenage son loves hiphop and mom is wondering if this is cultural appropriation.

Jennifer has always been that busy woman with food, water, duct tape, trash bags, and a change of clothes in her car. In 2012 Jennifer and her husband took a (CERT) Community Emergency Response Team course through the city of Seal Beach. The gear issued by CERT was one size fit none, and so she went in search of a pair of women's fit gloves.  When looking for a pair of gloves Jennifer discovered that the marketplace was lacking women's gear. At the same time she was telling her friends about her training. Jennifer heard the same three sentiments from several moms in her neighborhood: They knew they needed to be prepared but didn't know where to start They had started a backpack and had been overwhelmed in the process  Getting prepared stayed on their to do list for several years  So Jennifer started out to outfit the women in the world of emergency/disaster volunteering and preparedness.   Links https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/4867170/ https://citygirlprepper.com linkedin.com/in/jennifer-stewart-tai-426687a beyourownbestgirlfriend.blogspot.com (Blog) jennifermtai@citygirlprepper.com

Do you know what, how, and when to measure and track key performance indicators (KPIs) in your business? Today on Financial Fluency, I’m excited to have Jennifer Love with me. Jennifer is an entrepreneur, advisor, and CEO and founder of One More Woman. Jennifer has advised Fortune 200 businesses, celebrities, and high-performing entrepreneurs. She’s even helped raise over $100 million in venture capital funding.   On the show, Jennifer tells me how her entrepreneurial career began. She was in graduate school studying to be CIA/FBI strategist when she received an interesting project: write a business plan for a casino. Jennifer admits she had no clue how to write a business plan. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t much available at her fingertips online. So she turned to books and working with the casino to understand the mindset of the customers. After Jennifer had submitted her proposal, the casino funded it. Today, Jennifer strives to make sure women entrepreneurs do not feel alone. When women lack confidence or devalue themselves in business, it translates into how much money they make. So Jennifer created what she wished she had back in the day, One More Woman. One More Woman is an accelerator for female entrepreneurs who want to grow their revenue 10x and master financial literacy. Her vision is to create an army of women entrepreneurs who move into successful businesses. She sees women redistributing their wealth around the world and making the impact they were born to make. Jennifer wants women to break through everything that’s holding them back in an environment that’s supportive and helpful. Jennifer is hosting a 3-day Money Activation event in NYC that will help you understand your business and make numbers fun, so you feel empowered to make decisions. At the end of the course, you will: Eliminate the stress that’s keeping you stuck when you are in your business. Know how and what to track in your business so you can consistently generate income and make informed choices about where to invest. Have a clear plan, financial model, and flow set up for your business that’s optimized to help you save time and money.  To learn more about Jennifer, visit her website jenniferlove.com or follow her on social media: Facebook Instagram   Resources If you can’t make the Money Activation event happening July 17th - 19th in NYC, visit Jennifer’s website: jenniferlove.com for two programs to keep up with: Money Talks Money Mastery Bio Award winning, Shark Tank conquering, $100M+ raising, 17+ years under her high heels as a 5x serial entrepreneur, whose international wholesale chocolate company, NibMor, was named amongst the top US food and beverage companies of 2016. Jennifer Love is a trailblazer with a heart that matches her name. She’s an Agent of Abundance and the visionary CEO of One More Woman, the movement leading high-impact women entrepreneurs in 2 – 10xing revenue annually and becoming masterful with finances. She’s an eternal optimist grounded in hard analytics and believes ANYTHING is possible. In her words, “It’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of how.”